Software Answers

DynamicsFood Events

With the latest release of our DynamicsFood software (combining Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Certified for Dynamics add on, SI Foodware) due at the end of February, we have been busy updating our website and arranging some events to coincide with this.

We will be demonstrating the total food journey right through from the initial entry of the sales order using various different methods,via purchasing,production and quality control and ending with the final delivery of the goods to the end customer showing you where your business can save time as well as improve accuracy and traceability.

 

Events will be held at our offices in Wolverhampton, Microsoft’s offices in Reading and the home of Yorkshire County Cricket, Headingley during February and we look forward to welcoming everyone to these. To book a place, please register at www.tecman.co.uk/events or spend some time browsing our new website at www.dynamicsfood.co.uk and register from there!

If you can’t make these dates but would like to know more, please contact Claire Evans at claire.evans@tecman.co.uk

Incorrect Year-End Date in Pegasus Opera II / 3

 

Incorrect Year End Date

One common support call that we receive, particularly at this time of year, is a problem with the year-end date. When the Sales or Purchase Ledger transfer to Nominal is attempted in the final period, the system date is set to the period end date as normal, but a message comes up to say something like:

Unfortunately the period end date is occasionally set incorrectly for the next year when the Nominal Year-End routine is run.

To resolve this issue, you need to access Nominal - Utilities – Set Options and go to the Calendar Tab.

In the Calendar tab, amend the Year End date to the correct date and click OK.

This message will appear.

The Rebuild Periods Routine must be run. This is found in the Nominal Utilities Menu.

You should select “Yes” to Rebuild Nominal Periods and then select “Yes” to continue. It does not normally take much longer than 1 minute. It would be advisable to remove all users from the system before running this process.

Once the Period Rebuild has been done, the Sales Ledger Transfer to Nominal should work fine.

To prevent this problem from happening in the future, please go and check the year end date as soon as you have run the Nominal Year-End Routine.

There is no harm in checking the year end date at any time during the Nominal year, and if you make the change now, it will prevent the warning message in the final period of the year.

New Schedule of Free NAV workshops at TecMan announced

The popular free monthly workshops that have run for several years, are now scheduled for the 1st quarter of 2012.

We are covering VAT settlement returns and reconciliation, Jet Reports and Fixed Assets.  These run at our offices in Wolverhampton and hosted by our support team which means its a guaranteed sales person free event! 

If you have a support contract or are interested in moving your support across to Technology Management, book on, meet the team and maximise your investment in Dynamics NAV by finding out what's possible with the software.

Book on at www.tecman.co.uk/events

Liam

Microsoft Certification Gold in CRM and ERP for 2012

Pleased to confirm that we continue to hold Gold Certification with Microsoft for Dynamics ERP and CRM for the next 12 months.

This certification is the highest available from Microsoft, and requires a minimum of 6 certified employees in each competency. A number of case studies plus the completion of a customer satisfaction survey was also required to be successful.

The CRM team now stands at 10 dedicated people while our Dynamics ERP teams number 16. The investment in quality people all trained and certified to the highest level in implementation, consultancy, development. training and dedicated support is recognised by this certification.

CRM 2011 Role Tailored Forms

I have come across many CRM implementations where the fields on various forms can start to get cluttered and confusing. The fields always tend to be required by someone within the business but without proper management the sheer number of fields can start to take up un-necessary real estate on the form. Take for example a sales manager, when they open an account record they probably want to see key information such as year to date revenue, sales forecasts and turnover. This is fine, we can add that information to the form and the sales manager will be happy, but what about the poor support technician? When they open the account form they want to be able to see support contract details and case history, without having to scroll past a boat load of sales information first. Thankfully CRM 2011 has a great feature that means you can tailor forms based on the role of the user, so the form for a sales manager can now have completely different content and layout to what a support technician may see. All we need to do is create a relevant form, with the desired layout, and then assign a security role to that form.

So here’s what a sales manager will see when they open up an account record:

And here is what a support technician will see when they open up an account record:

As you can see, they are two totally different sets of fields, but very relevant to the user accessing it. The forms are clean and un-cluttered, which makes the user experience a whole lot better as they don’t need to search through a maze of fields to get to the information they need.

This feature doesn’t stop there though, not only can you customise the form layout on a role by role basis; you can also specify the code driven business logic too! This means you can add different sets of validation and actions to a form, depending on the role of the user accessing it. The combination of these features makes quickly implementing a UI, which fits all users’ requirements, a lot more achievable then previous versions of the product. Feel free to contact Technology Management should you require more information about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, email crm@tecman.co.uk or visit our website http://www.tecman.co.uk/Products/Microsoft-Dynamics-CRM

Nathan.hawkins@tecman.co.uk

Support for Dynamics NAV version 5

Recently we have heard of Dynamics NAV customers who are being told by their partners that they have to upgrade because Microsoft support for their version ends soon. Specifically Microsoft have announced that support for Version 5 ends in April 2012 and even, get this, that support for version 2009 ends in 2014.

While this mainstream support withdrawal does mean that your partner cannot go back to Microsoft for support should you have a problem, in reality, with version 5, this is not an issue anyway.

The first point is that if you have a version 5 system that is unstable then you really have the wrong partner. System stability as in NAV crashing out of the client (v5 didn’t have an RTC remember so it classic client only) is usually caused by the executable that you install rather than the objects in your database. But what we term a client upgrade i.e. changing the executables to the 2009 R2 version can be done quickly and safely. Not only does this ensure stability but means you can install on new platforms such as Windows 7 etc. The point to remember is that it upgrading the objects (especially from Classic forms to RTC pages) that takes the time and introduces risk.

Secondly what happens if you need a regulatory update as obviously past that date, Microsoft will not provide that automatically? Well first ask your partner how many of those there have been in the last ten years, the answer for most industries should be none. If they start to mention the VAT changes than point out that this was a change of rates that simply needed a data change, reverse charge VAT was supported in version 5 from its launch. Where the government has made regulation changes that have required program changes they have given over twelve months of notice so there will be plenty of time to plan how to cope.

The final point is that if your version 5 system is stable (and systems that old almost always are) then why do you need Microsoft support? At Technology Management I cannot remember the last time re had to refer an issue with a version this old and if we did I suspect that we would be told to upgrade and see if the problem still occurred anyway. You still need application support but any decent partner will be able to provide that for many years to come without needing anything from Microsoft. 

In short the telling you that you ‘have to upgrade’ is in the same scale of scaremongering as the millennium bug was before year 2000. People who try to frighten you to upgrade are not acting in your best interest .Am I saying you never need to upgrade, definitively not but you should upgrade because of the benefits you will get not because of the threat that your systems will fail and no one will help you.

With the new Role Tailored Client, Web Services, new Reporting Services reports as well as the improved functionality there are loads of advantages to 2009 but please do it for the right reasons not because your partner scares you with unfounded fear.

For your information I have included the detail of the Microsoft reminder below.

Mainstream Support for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 Ends April 2012

Mainstream support for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0, including 5.0 SP1, ends April 2012 per the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy. Customers who are current on a service plan can continue to access the following benefits through CustomerSource:

• Previously released Upgrades, Updates, Service Packs, Fixes and Regulatory/Tax Updates
• Self-Help Support through Knowledge Base articles and online content
• Unlimited Online Training
• CustomerSource Community and Tools

For more information related to Microsoft Support Lifecycle policies and product dates for all Microsoft Dynamics NAV products, see the Support Lifecycle Page. For support lifecycle information for Microsoft Dynamics NAV in particular, see Microsoft Dynamics NAV Support Lifecycle Information.

Do things differently – automatically file supplier invoices

Streamlining your document management system can help you improve business efficiency, reduce costs and build better relationships with your customers.

Technology Management, in partnership with Equisys, has introduced an electronic document management solution, Zetadocs, which integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics NAV. We can provide advice on how adopting a secure, sustainable approach to invoicing can benefit your company.

Zetadocs uses pre-printed or sticky label barcodes to automatically scan, split and file batches of documents via an office scanner:

· Reducing the time and cost of filing documents

· Speeding dispute resolution with instant, on-screen retrieval

· Minimising the risk of documents being lost or misfiled

· Easing audit processes, and strengthens compliance with legal regulations and process management standards

Supplier Invoice Processing for Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web Event

Our software partners Equisys are running a series of free webinars. The upcoming event on “Supplier Invoice Processing” focuses on how Zetadocs can help you improve business efficiency and save you money:

Supplier Invoice Processing for Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Date: Thursday 26^th January 2012

Time: 3.30pm
Duration: 30 minutes

Cost: FREE

Register for the event here:

http://www.equisys.com/products/zetadocs_for_nav/supplierinvoicewebinar.html

For more information on how Technology Management can help your business, contact Jason Tromans at Jason.Tromans@tecman.co.uk or call 01902 578300

Pension Auto-Enrolment………What's it all about? & How does it effect you?

Although new duties come in from 1 October 2012, individual employers' own duties will be introduced gradually over the following years and will be based on the size of the employer, typically by PAYE size.

The following is a table showing the staging dates for employers with 3,000 or more employees.  The Government is revising the staging dates for employers with less than 3,000 employees and further information will appear here early in 2012.

Employer (by PAYE  scheme size)	Staging Date
120,000 or more	1 October 2012
50,000 to 119,999	1 November 2012
30,000 to 49,999	1 January 2013
20,000 to 29,999	1 February 2013
10,000 to 19,999	1 March 2013
6,000 to 9,999	1 April 2013
4,100 to 5,999	1 May 2013
4,000 to 4,099	1 June 2013
3,000 to 3,999	1 July 2013

 

There will be a three month waiting period before employers are required to enrol workers into their designated scheme. During this period, workers can choose to opt in to start saving straight away.

The largest employers who are due to auto-enrol between 1 October 2012 and 1 November 2012 will be allowed to start auto-enrolment from as early as July 2012 to avoid the Christmas period.

Employers will be given the flexibility to re-enrol workers three months either side of their automatic re-enrolment date.

What do we still manufacture in the UK?

Pop stars? Possibly. But Technology Management’s long list of Manufacturing customers is testament to the fact that Manufacturing in the UK is still big business. In fact Manufacturing output accounted for nearly 12% of GDP according to the office for national statistics in 2010, making it the third largest sector in the UK economy.

Manufacturing is of course a global enterprise but Technology Management’s home, the West Midlands was once known as “the Workshop of the World.” In the late 18^th century the industrial revolution began in the UK and subsequently spread through Western Europe, North America, Japan and eventually the globe.

But just because we were there first doesn’t mean we’re the most successful. In 2011, the UN ranked the UK’s manufacturing output at number six, behind the US, China, Japan, Germany and Italy. As new economies grow, this position will slip and the UK won’t hold back the tide forever.

To compete on a global scale we have to do more with less, using finite resources intelligently and economically. Technology Management share this goal with our customers throughout the project lifecycle. The product I work with, Dynamics AX, has expanded its industry focus in recent years, but it has always had a deserved solid reputation in Manufacturing. Manufacturing capability was woven into the DNA of Dynamics AX from the beginning, but customers (and indeed consultants!) are often daunted by the breadth and depth of functionality on offer.

Over the coming weeks and months I will help the readers of this blog understand Dynamics AX manufacturing from end to end, covering the various approaches- Discrete, Process and LEAN and, the depth of functionality that is available with Dynamics AX2012. We’ll start with the basics, but I’ll move on to advanced setup pretty quickly- as that’s where Dynamics AX can help you manage your finite resources most effectively.

The aim of this series of posts is to show our customers the power and agility of AX and stimulate an informed conversation on applying AX to your business. Every manufacturing customer shares a few common processes, but all customers (and Dynamics implementations) are unique.  With this in mind you can always discuss specific applications by contacting us directly- where we can help you do more with less, using Dynamics AX.

Next week we’ll start with the fundamental building blocks (literally) of manufacturing- Bills of Materials, or BoMs.

Process Documentation Tool

Technology Management provides software that controls and drives business processes. Whether its from the basics of enquiry through sales order to delivery and then payment or a much more industry or even customer specific getting all the steps right and clearly understood can be the key to rapidly and reliably implementing changes.

Documenting how it will work before you do the development in a way that’s clear and easy to understand but no the less comprehensive has always proved a challenge. When you write a specification in word its too open to interpretation but trying to diagram anything but the most basic flowchart in Visio can take an immense and lead to frustration the first time an amendment is needed and all those lines have to be reconnected.

So we are delighted to have recently found and trained up in a new tool called Engage Modeller. Engage is a cloud based tool that easy and rapid enough to be be able to ‘build while you talk’ negating the need to take copious notes and then try to understand them later. As you identify the actions and questions you can drop them into the schematic there and then complete with as many notes about each stage as you need. The connections are created automatically or by drag and drop and you can drill through to sub-processes.

Putting responsibilities and probabilities against each stage and you can calculate your capacity and reliability for each process as well. 

So next time your talking to one of our consultants about a process change don’t be surprised if they fire up Engage. We believe its going to serious improve our quality by not just enabling us to create solutions ‘right first time’ but by shorter solution delivery times via easier communication and making handover to support and understanding of how it works in years to come much easier.