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Hi all,
im working on a project where i need to take an infopath timesheet form and send the data to GP2010 (PATimesheets).
I have the workflow built for sharepoint, but am having some difficulty using eConnect to do the insert we are not a big shop, and i am not all that familiar with the back office stuff in GP. My question is:
As a somewhat experienced developer for .net, working with databases directly is very comfortable for me. Would it be better for me to just insert my timesheet records directly to the database using the stored procedure taPATimeSheetHdrInsert and taPATimeSheetLineInsert? How does the validation happen to pull in the pay rates? In the PA Timesheet card, as the payroll guy moves off fields in the timesheet batch entry, it is instantly updating the pay rate given the pay code he just entered, so something is firing immediately on cell update.
thanks
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good advice....definately worth spending time to look at utilizing business portal to its fullest extent. however, in our timesheets, we have some very custom fields that definately wont be on the off-the-shelf setup. we are a dive construction company, so we also gather information about the divers and how deep they dive to do a job, and other info to build up bonuses.
another wrench in this is that a lot of our offshore workers use a shared account to login to our network. this is something we should probably change, since i would love to have our w-2's and benefits in employee self-service available to everyone. i just checked our license, and we have 80 users for business portal (i assume this is only concurrent users).
forunately, i am using standard dot net (vb and c#) to perform these tasks and not some turbo language that wont be around in 5 years. plus, i will hopefully be here as well with some programmers under me.
but i will temporarily suspend this development until i have thouroughly gone through the business portal documentation, gotten some stuff setup, so i can at least see how this looks and works.
lastly, you are right about setting up projects correctly, and i have been saying this for a year now. only now is it biting us in the a$$.
thanks, and i'll try to keep this post updated with my experiences with bp.
Hi George,
Several years back I was thinking the same way as you... coming from a developer background I always felt it could be done quicker and better when having DIY solutions... until the day I had to take over a dozen small applications that were gravitating around Dynamics GP and developped by some long-gone guy in Turbo-something-language... The apps worked fine for years until the GP system started to evolve and the security change... or just had to move to a new server... and than the hell started to pour in..
I managed to fix some of the minor issues in the source code, which were still around, but badly documented, and because I knew a bit about the language from my old days of programming (I've almost 30 years IT behind me), but most of the code had to be handed over to a contractual programmer that knew well the language, but nothing about GP... You get the picture (and the bill $$$).
This is just to say that you need to think sometime 3-5 years ahead of know and ask yourself : will I still be around to maintain my code ? will anybody be able to modify or adapt the code for future version of GP ? etc.. Relying on commercial software may not offer you as much flexibility then your own DIY code, but at least you know there is someone that will take care of it (at least chances are good that it will).
Most of the setup for BP can be figured out from the god damn manuals (RTFM), but it may take a few days to get it, whereas a well versed GP consultant (and BP of course) will be able to set you up in a matter of 1-2 days and show you how to manage the security. I've over 100 users in my BP and it's not that bad once you know how it works.... if someting doesn't work, you can always find help in the community or from Microsoft... Weight the time and money it will cost vs. developping your own app that may require days and weeks of debugging and tweaking... do the math and you'll quickly realize it's not worth the effort (unless you expect to market your solution and make $$$ of it :-) ).
PS: I forgot to mention that a proper setup of your Project Accounting in GP is key to smoth working solution (with or without BP), no matter if you do your own app or use 3rd party...
well, i did get the business portal installed, but the setup and security of all the components is a little daunting. On top of that, i dont think we utilize the project screens properly (setting up project managers, sales, account managers, etc). i wanted our GP consultants to help us out for a day, but they want to charge us a grand just to pick up the phone practically.
but then again, i have only been running this for a day now, so i'll look into how you setup timesheets in BP. it's just that i feel like I, as a developer, have more control if i write it myself, than relying on some off the shelf solution that i might spend just as much time customizing for our company.
Hi George,
We're using Project Acounting (PA) as well in our GP 2010 implementation, but I think you try to re-invent the wheel... Microsoft is providing a solution called Business Portal - Timesheet and Expense reports that is tied to the PA module in GP. You'll need to install the BP 5.1 on a server where you'll install also SharePoint foundation 2010. The BP will be connected to your Dynamics GP databases (and the DYNAMICS system database) and you'll have to install the PDK (Personnal Data Keeper) application from the GP 2010 DVD to process the Timesheets and Expense reports..
I'm not sure that eConnect is officially supporting the PA module in GP to create TS entries....
The PDK application will allow you to validate the TS reports (and by extend the Expenses) and then process them to push the data into your GP company.
In GP you'll then post the created batches towards your GL accounts with the rates that were setup in your payroll module for each employees.
Check the documentation for the Business Portal deployement in Customer Source...
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