Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains 10 Launch

Last Thursday I went to Microsoft’s Dynamics Great Plains 10 Launch, here’s what I came away with:

Besides GP 10, they gave a quick demo of Dynamics CRM (At one point CRM was going to live under the Live brand but this has changed). What I saw was pretty sweet, basically it lives within Outlook. They also demo SharePoint 2007, I was pretty impressed with this too.

What’s New

GP looks and works like Office 2007 (Ribbon, smart favorites, etc…) so getting Accounting team accustomed will be a task.
Workflow, PO process, auto notifications with things post, sales hit a certain number, item is sold, good stuff here.
Search/Filters MUCH easier, custom column views, good stuff here.
Integrate SQL Reporting Services in GP, No need to go out to reporting server to see reports
Custom Home Page (Can pull from web parts)
Integrated with Outlook (For some users no need to open GP, can get GP panes in Outlook 2007)
75 SQL Reporting Services templates to start with
Excel Reports Server - They are really pushing this, I get some GP data, make it look how I want then save the excel document, this automatically gets pushed back to great plains so next time I open the report I get live data and others can see it too.
200 excel report templates come with it
Free Online GP Training (use to cost $)

New License Model called Business Ready License

Grandfatherd in if under current maintenance so you don’t have to go to new model· The current model you buy components as needed (Example: eConnect or FRx)
New model you get everything for a flat fee ($10,000)
New model you get 20 license to start with, $500 additional license
They are really pushing people to the new model so some heavy discounts are being given. A couple of people I talked to said they basically got free maintenance for 2 years and it ended up being cheaper. I got a coupon too

SharePoint 2007

You can do some really good things with some of their components when you hook them up to Microsoft CRM & SharePoint Server
Talking about a employee SharePoint server where
- Employee update their info, check on sick days, vacation
- Timesheets
- Payroll stubs, w4, w2, direct deposit, 401K
- Skills, training
SharePoint 2007 is cross browser (FF, Safari)
Can push SQL reporting services into SharePoint so that we would have cross browser reports

Written by Tim on October 23rd, 2007 with 3 comments.
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