It’s no secret that Microsoft Dynamics GP is a robust enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for a number of industries. Below are two Integration Manager quick tips to help you better use your Dynamics GP software.
Quick Tip 1: Simplify the Mapping Process
A great way to save yourself time when creating Integration Manager integrations is to simplify the mapping process. Many people don’t know that the Integration Manager mapper is drag and drop enabled. This can save you time eliminating the need to select each source field, open the source field lookup and ‘Selecting’ a source field.
Simply open up the Source field one time, and instead of selecting a source field, click on the source field and drag it to the destination field within the mapper. This will create the link and leave the source window open so you can drag and drop all their source field mappings by only opening the source window one time.
Quick Tip #2: Pathname Translations
When creating or updating Integration Manager integrations, one task consistently comes up as a check list item. This can be time consuming. For example, a common task might be that the source of the data files changes from one server or machine drive to another. You may find yourself updating all the ‘Source Adapters’ to point to the new folder or drive. Through the use of Pathname Translations, this can become a very easy and maintainable task.
To use this feature, open the IM options window (Tools -> Options) and change over to the Pathname Translation tab. This window will typically show the default translation IMSamples\, which is set equal to your Integration Manager samples directory. You can define your own translation in this window and use it anywhere that a ‘path’ might be used within Integration Manager, specifically in the Source Adapter definitions. By doing this you can create Source Adapters using a ‘relative’ path and the filename. In the event that the directory for the source files changes, you only need to update the one translation and all the Source Adapters will use the updated path.
Below is a quick example creating a translation called TRG\. Create the translation and assign a Path to it. In this example the path C:\Users\danr\Documents\ will be used anywhere that Integration Manager encounters the string TRG\.
This translation can now be used during Source Adapter definition when specifying the file location.
Once this is done, if the path for the source files changes -- regardless of how many source adapters you have created -- all you need to do is update the path in the translations window and the change will be used by all the source adapters.
Learn more quick tips for Dynamics GP by contacting a partner like The Resource Group.
By Dan Roach, The Resource Group