Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 R2 – Taking A Company Offline

The feature to take a company offline in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 R2 provides an easy way for administrators to take a company offline in order to perform maintenance or business tasks that require exclusive access to the company, such as a year-end close or an upgrade/update.

While a company is offline, only the user needing to perform the task and administrators can log into the company. Administrators can also provide a default or custom message to users who attempt to login/access a company while it is offline.

Administrators are able to select which companies to take offline and what which users should still have access to the company when it is offline.

With this feature, administrators can also see how many users are currently logged into the companies being taken offline and send those users a message that will be displayed within the Dynamics GP 2013 R2 application.

Messages can be sent as a task reminder of upcoming events like maintenance happening this weekend or pop-up messages asking the user to exit the system, for example.

When the administrator has taken a company offline, current users will be able to stay in the company and continue working, once logged out, however, they will not be able to log back in unless they are a user designated to access the company when it is offline.

The ‘Take Company Offline for Maintenance’ window can be accessed through the Administration area page, selecting ‘Take Company Offline’ under the Utilities section.

When an administrator inserts a company over to the ‘Offline Companies’ side of the window, it will show the number of current users in that company(s). Clicking on the ‘Current Users’ link will open the User Activity window where you can see what users are logged into that company and also gives admins the option to remove those users.

One the bottom of the window is the messaging options. This is what users will see when they attempt to log into an offline company. You can either use the default message, or select Custom and enter your own text.

After selecting a company to be offline, click OK to take the company offline. If users are logged into the now offline company/companies, you will receive the following message. If you click No, the Take Company Offline for Maintenance window will close.

If you click Yes, the Send Message window will open:

In this Send Message window, you can specify which users that are logged into the selected company/companies will receive notification. You can also use the ‘Send Message As…’ options to determine how users will receive that notification.

You can choose from either a Notification Message (for users that are currently logged on) or as a Task with Reminder. Once you enter text for the message that will be delivered to users and click Send, the notification will be sent out.

Specify Offline Company Administrator

When a company is offline, you may specify a single user that will still be able to login to perform the desired maintenance/administration tasks.

This can be done through the Company Setup window, accessed from the Administration area page, under Setup.

In this window, use the ‘User with offline access’ field to specify who is able to log into the offline company and click OK to save changes:

 **Note: If you attempt to delete the user who has access to an offline company, you will receive the following:

     “You are not able to delete this user because they are assigned as the user that can log into a company when it is offline. Change the user allowed to log into an offline company and then you can delete this user.”

Login Experience

Non-Administrative Users:

Users that log into Dynamics GP and look at the Company Login window will see that the name of the offline company will be changed to reflect its status:

 If the user attempts to log into an offline company, an offline company is the only company the user has access to, or if the user is setup to automatically log into a company that is offline at the time, the user will see a notification that the company is offline:

Administrative Users:

If the user logging into an offline company is in the ‘sysadmin’ SQL Server role, the POWERUSER security role, or has been given permission to access the company when it is offline, they will see the following warning message when they select an offline company. If the admin user chooses Yes, they will be able to login to the offline company.

Hopefully this feature will help life easier for administrators with taking companies offline, knowing what users are currently showing as logged into a company as they're trying to take it offline and to let users know when a company is currently offline or scheduled to be offline at a certain time.

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