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ISSUE 6 - WINTER 2011
Dynamics SL 2011 Preview
Much like Mark Twain, the
rumor of Dynamics SL’s death has been greatly
exaggerated. That point is made loud and clear
with the forthcoming release of Dynamics SL 2011 (what
would be 8.0 in the traditional number versioning
scheme). With Dynamics SL 2011, Microsoft has brought
greater integration to its product stack and some much
needed usability enhancements that users of other
products have taken for granted for years.
Dynamics SL 7.0 was about
the underlying technology. The shift from the old VB 6
architecture to the new .NET architecture. With the
underlying code-base thoroughly modernized, the goal for
SL 2011 was to bring significant enhancements in
usability, document management, integration as well as
specific new features.
Upon launching Dynamics SL
2011, the first thing you will notice is, finally, a
thoroughly modern user interface. Microsoft has taken
the ‘Outlook-style’ menu structure that was introduced
in SL 7.0 and kicked it up a notch while making the main
menu pane truly interactive and useful. A new Activities
pane shows tasks and activities that the user needs to
accomplish such as bills due, outstanding invoices, etc.
This kind of basic alerts has been available in programs
like QuickBooks for years, its nice to see that it has
finally been added in Dynamics SL.
When you lick on an item in the activities pane, the
adjacent Quick List pane populates with the related
records, allowing a
user to quickly navigate through the list list of Customers, Vendors, Projects,
etc. and immediately drill-down on the selected record.
Dynamics SL 2011 Main Menu (click
to enlarge)
Drop-down
navigation history, similar to your browser history,
allows you to easily jump back to screens or reports
that you have recently visited. Menu Quick Search allows
you to find the screen or report you want by search on
just a portion of the name, eliminating the need to
navigate through sometimes complex menu structures.
One of the most important
usability improvements for organizations running
multiple companies within SL is the new feature that
allows you to have multiple companies open at the same
time without logging out and back in. Screens are
labeled and color-coded to make it easy to identify
which company you are working with in a given screen.
Dynamics SL New Multi-Company capability makes working
in multiple companies easy (click
to enlarge)
The new Quick Query feature
is sure to change many users’ day-to-day experience with
SL. Similar to Smart Lists that have long been available
in Dynamics GP, Quick Query allows users to effortlessly
query and drill-down on data without having to navigate
to individual modules and screens. Fifty predefined
Quick Queries are included in the base SL system and an
optional Quick Query designer tool will allow creation
of custom queries, even on custom and third-party
product tables and data. Pre-built queries can be
filtered and those filtered queries can be saved for
future use. A click of the Excel icon on the toolbar
will automatically export the query results to Excel.
Quick Query will make exploring SL data faster and
easier than ever before (click
to enlarge)
A major addition to SL 2011
is document management capability. While not as complete
as many third-party document management solutions on the
market, SL 2011 now includes basic document management
as part of core system functionality. Users can now
attached documents to most transactions and those
documents ‘move’ with transactions through the system so
a reviewer or approver down the line can open documents
associated with a transaction allowing them to have full
transaction documentation with literally a click of the
mouse.
Dynamics SL 2011 has out of the box document management
capability (click
to enlarge)
Built-in document
management along with SharePoint integration has the
ability to really revolutionize the way organizations
use Dynamics SL. Documents and reports can be
uploaded directly to SharePoint from with SL through DocShare
which now supports additional document types including .pdf. You can easily share documents with non-SL
users, even customers and vendors, directly through
SharePoint with out-of-the-box integration to SharePoint
Server 2010.
Speaking of integration, SL
2011 provides tighter integration to Microsoft Office
than ever before. If you look carefully you’ll see a
Microsoft Excel button now part of the standard SL
toolbar. A click of this button exports the current data
set directly to Excel. And Quick Send, introduced in SL
7.0, continues to be enhanced and expanded and SL 2011
introduces new document types and additional options for
automatically emailing invoices, statements, purchase
orders and other documents through Microsoft Outlook.
Dynamics SL 2011 also
features enhanced Projects to Project Server integration
with support for Microsoft Project Server 2010. Projects
to Project Server integration features two-way
integration allowing projects to be maintained and
updated either in SL or Project Server including the
ability to manage and update resources, budgets,
revenue, expenses and more.
Dynamics SL Projects to Project Server 2010 integration
(click
to enlarge)
BusinessPortal
functionality continues to expand in SL 2011. Now built
on SharePoint Server 2010, BusinessPortal allows
virtually any project related task to be completed
without using the native SL client:
from setting up projects and assigning resources to
creating budgets and more. New timecard features give
access to additional timecard detail and correcting
features makes it easier for employees to correct and
modify timecards. New automated approval delegation for
timecards, expense reports, project invoices, and
budgets (including change order revisions) makes setting
up and managing approvals more flexible than ever
before.
BusinessPortal in SL 2011 offers many new features
including new approval delegation. (click
to enlarge)
Another key addition in SL 2011 is Management Reporter,
the replacement for the venerable FRx Financial
Reporter. Management Reporter is a complete re-write
using modern tools like C# and .NET with a SQL Server
database providing greater stability, faster processing speed,
and a host of new features while retaining much of the
familiar look and functionality of FRx. Speaking of
faster processing speed, processing is off-loaded to the
server to free up workstation resources. An included
migration tool will make migrating FRx reports to
Management Reporter quick and relatively painless.
Management Reporter also has formatting enhancements
over FRX, allowing the addition of logos, headers &
footers, etc. It also boasts a new report library
function and fully supports Active Directory. For
existing SL customers, FRx can still be used, but new
customers will get Management Reporter only.
The slow migration to SQL
Server Reporting Services continues but in the mean
time, Crystal is not only still supported but is
upgraded to Crystal 2008.
Of course there are many new specific features in SL
2011. These include new integration between Projects and
Inventory including Project Inventory Allocation, the
ability to create Projects from with Sales Orders,
consolidated Project Billing, Fee-based revenue
recognition based on cost plus percentage, Project-GL
reconciliation report, and new government contractor
reports, just to name a few. There's also a new Project
Transaction Transfer screen that lets you query and
correct project transactions individually or in bulk.
And for all those 'unvouchered receipts' hanging out in
your system from vouchers not being properly associated
with their corresponding PO receipt, the new Link AP and
PO Documents screen allows you to go back and link AP
vouchers to PO receipts after both have been released.
Other small but notable
improvements includes the long awaited removal of the
ever present 'new log files' message on login (its been
moved to the system tray where it can easily be ignored,
plus it goes away by itself after just a few seconds)
and alternating line shading on all grids to make it
easier to follow lines across. There's also a new Print
Screen button next to the Excel button that will do a
print screen of the active screen, great for developing
training or procedure manuals. Another fix that has been
needed since the original Solomon IV is date entry
fields. They actually work now and even include a
drop-down calendar.
There's also new Web
Services available, making it easier than ever before to
build web facing applications that interact with SL. You
can even build your own Web Services with the included
SDK. And although there's been no formal announcement,
in
another release, Microsoft noted that a Dynamics CRM
to SL connector is finally coming in the second half of
2011. No details have been made public yet.
As they say, every rose has its thorns, and SL 2011 is
no exception, the thorns here being the potential for
extensive upgrades in order to implement. SL 2011
basically requires the latest version of every other
Microsoft product that it touches. That means it must
run on Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008,
SharePoint Server 2010, Office 2010 and Windows 7. This
could mean a significant costs for many organizations.
And since SL 2011 doesn’t provide any backward
compatibility with these related products, it means that
they must all either be in place prior to an upgrade or,
depending on which version of SL you are upgrading from,
all products must be upgraded simultaneously.
All in all SL 2011 is a huge leap forward for Dynamics
SL and represents a significant investment in SL on the
part of Microsoft. It should prove the doubters and
naysayers wrong once and for all. Dynamics SL is here to
stay and its future looks very bright.
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