Dynamics GP Macro: Little Helper Big On Results

If you’re like me, there are times when you have more work than you can handle.  This is based on the fact that we are limited in what we can accomplish with our two hands and some of our tasks can be quite repetitive.  Well, what if you had the ability to recruit a ‘Little Helper’ to assist you with some of your chores and tasks?

Dynamics GP has a Little Helper ready to assist you.  All you need to do is recognize that he’s waiting around, hoping that you will call upon him so he can feel productive.  Providing him with some simple instructions can make him happy and you more productive.  By the way, he is known as the GP Macro. 

Macros in GP are simply recordings of a series of keystrokes, mouse-clicks and mouse-movements made while performing a procedure.  It’s like taking a video of a series of tasks that you want to accomplish and then being able to replay it at any time to accomplish those various tasks.  Your Little Helper can be a big time saver while performing certain tasks such as Bank Transfer entries or other repetitive tasks.  Simply record the series of events up until the time you need to key in any data.  When ready, just replay the macro and you’ve saved yourself a series of keystrokes.

However, your Little Helper can really be productive by helping you import data.  Running Macros can be effective when working with these situations:

1)      Integration Manager does not support what you’re trying to import.

2)      You are using a customized or third party version of a window that might interfere with Integration Manager.

3)      You don’t want to use eConnect, Table Import, SQL or some other technical method.

4)      GP Master Records.

5)      Transactional data that would access only a single form (window).

6)      Any process where identical repetitive steps are required.  As an example, members of my team have deleted selective inventory Items in GP using macros as it was not possible to be done via SQL as there were multiple related tables.

7)      Some developers even use them for testing purposes.

Summary Steps to create a Macro to import data are as follows:

1)      Record a dummy macro in Dynamics GP to be the template macro.

2)      Open the macro template in an MS Word document.

3)      Use the Mail Merge feature using the Step By Step Mail Merge Wizard to locate your data set and create your letter to define the records in the template.

4)      Run the macro in Dynamics GP to import the data.

Dynamics GP Macros really can aid you in many different ways.  It’s just up to you to give your Little Helper some instructions. 

 by Tod Heath, Senior Dynamics GP Business Analyst for Ignify a Northern California Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner

Contact Ignify at gpblog@ignify.com – an Inner Circle 2009 Microsoft Dynamics Partner – offering Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Microsoft CRM customers low-cost high value services.  Ignify has offices in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Nashville, Chicago, and Seattle.

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