Building a website with Dynamics backend

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by Bridget C

115

I am a web developer and I have a client who uses Dynamics (currently GP 8 but soon upgrading to 10.0). They want an ecommerce website using their dynamics inventory system and they also want online account management using their dynamics client data. Can both of these things be done using eConnect and Web Services? If so, are these a separate purchase or are they included with Dynamics already? I'm just putting together a proposal/quote for now so I just wanted to make sure what I'm proposing is possible since I don't have much experience with Dynamics (I'm very familiar with asp.net/mssql)

I know that there are third party Dynamics eCommerce solutions out there but I just wanted to know if it was possible to custom build one using eConnect and Web Services.

Would you recommend just building a Sharepoint website or would an ASP.NET custom coded site work just as well?

Thanks in advance for any advice...I've been researching all over the web but haven't been able to find a clear answer to my questions so far.

*This post is locked for comments

I have the same question (0)

All responses (9)

Answers (0)

Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi there Building the site with econnect and Web services is very possible. You would need to think VERY carefully regarding SQL Licensing and also I think that now you have to have ODC (Office Data Connector) licences as well. You could use MOSS to provide content management for your website (images for inventory items etc) but you might do better with straight asp.net as using sharepoint for External facing sites brings yet another layer of licensing issues. Paul

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Bridget C 115 on at

Like (0)

Report

Thanks so much for the info Paul. I was thinking along the same lines about using Sharepoint, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't the standard go to solution. Also, thanks for the heads up on the additional licenses - I'll definitely look into that. Would you happen to know if eConnect and Web Services come standard with Dynamics or need to purchased separately?
One more quick question - the client is requested that the site be built with Joomla! which I am very strongly recommending against. My gut feeling (since again I don't much experience with Dynamics) is that getting Joomla and Dynamics to hook up would be a nightmare and much more time consuming (ie expensive) than using asp.net - am I on the right track?
Thanks again for any advice!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
MG-16101311-0 26,225 on at

Like (0)

Report

Have you tried looking into Business Portal and the eCommerce component?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Bridget C 115 on at

Like (0)

Report

Business Portal does sound like it would be a good solution - do I need a Sharepoint server for that?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Richard Whaley 25,195 on at

Like (0)

Report

Joomla is a framework for presenting pages to users in a Content Management System. It also has several eCommerce solutions that take orders against inventory maintained in the site and records the orders. With this, your interface would be a periodic download of orders to GP from say VirtueMart (a Joomla shopping cart), with an upload of inventory quantities and prices. These could be scheduled. The db under Joomla is MySql.

It would be a much faster implementation than doing it from scratch and give your client much more flexibility for changes to the content of the home page, details on products, et cetera. GP has basic info on products but no where near enough for web presentations.

Now, if you want to get very artistic in the presentation of products / images, Joomla will start to fail you.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

With the new licensing model, effective May 1st, there is a new external connector that might work out for you in this case. Below is the exerpt from the license change document:

--------------------------

Add External Connector

An External Connector license will be added to the BE and AM Price Lists. This license allows external non-employee non-validated people access to the Dynamics database.

1. Price is $5,000 per implementation

2. In accordance with the Software License Terms, all users of the Dynamics database must be licensed in some manner, and some of the users are external to the company not known (and cannot therefore be DCO Users), this is the license needed for those anonymous external users

-------------------

From what I have gathered, this license will allow for anyone that does not have a GP user license or ISV license to get data from the Dynamics databases. If I'm not mistaken, the DCO license would only apply if you were to use Sharepoint with your project.

Also, unless it's changed, I think the licensing for Web Services and eConnect is gained through the purchase of the Developer Toolkit. I think this has also been rolled into what is now called the Customization Suite under the new licensing model. I am unsure of the price for this one though.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Build VS Buy is an interesting concept. If your client is looking to build not much is going to take them off that path unless they look at the numbers and development involved in a project like this. I would note there are solutions in the industry specifically built for GP that allow you to create your own front end but take advantage of a prebuilt proven solution that can be customized easily.www.azox.comYou can hit B2C and B2B marketing and all generally 95% of what customers need come out of the box. We replace custom solutions all the time as most customers don’t need a custom solution they just are not aware of what is out there for them. Run off the Dynamics GP database you utilize data and don’t duplicate you efforts in updates for a webstore.The solution has built in CMS and is already SEO optimized. It provides a PCI compliant CC processing solution as well which more often than not is also needed. All you have to do is have it installed and brand the site, work thought the UI and launch the webstore. On the other hand you can spend months developing a solution that will touch about 25% of what this already does for a small cost up front.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Beat Bucher GP Gee... 28,058 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Bridget,
I can only confirm what Giuseppe exposed in the previous posting. Having worked for a larger manufacturing company that had EDI in-house, and that initially was only distributing their products to reseller, we faced one day that challenge to implement an eCommerce portal for the company, because they decided to start selling some items and goods to the consumer. We had quite an experience when it came to data exchange (thanks to many years of EDI with larger partners), but the eCommerce is a very different story. Although the out-of-the-box solution from Azox is very professional and integrated with Dynamics GP, it comes also with its price.
Our company was too cheap to spend the money and decied that we were going the home-made solution avenue. As Richard pointed out, there are many open-source eCommerce packages available out there runing with MySQL and various frames. We choosed osCommerce as a platform and since we already owned the product Scribe Insight for our EDI, it was an easy task. The most difficult part was to find a suitable CC processing company that would fit for the osCommerce interface and was not too expensive in processing fees.
The order management was easy with Scribe Insight, since we generated the Sales Order in GP thru this interface the same way we handled our EDI orders from larger partners. We just had to collect the orders data from the MySQL DB down to our MS-SQL server with a DTS (or SSIS) script and process the data with Scribe. Of course eConnect can do the job, but there is more programming involved, whereas Scribe Insight is an intuitive point-and-click solution with easy mapping in GUI.
Good luck with your project. Don't lose the sight of the target and keep in mind, it is a choice about timing and money, the longer the project gets to the production, the more it costs, so a ready-solution that might look expensive at the first sight, may end up cheaper due to its short implementation time frame. Our eCommerce implementation took several months (I think at least 6 months until everything was figured out, including the look & feel of the web-site).

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

I received your email but it wouldnt let me respond. Can you send me a direct email to gianni@azox.com?

I am happy to provide more info on gateways we support and how we can help.

Best,

Giuseppe Ianni

Was this reply helpful? Yes No