SSRS: GL Trial Balance Summary report returns no data - Follow Up

Back in July of last year, I wrote an article on a reported issue with the SSRS GL Trial Balance reports were not returning any data with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 and 2010 R2 (SP2) - see SSRS: GL Trial Balance Summary report returns no data.

Since then, this problem has been documented in KB article 2588519 - GL Trial Balance SRS Reports return no data using Microsoft Dynamics GP and a workaround provided in the same article to fix the ailing stored procedure, dbo.seeglPrintSRSTrialBalance, causing data not to be returned.

The good news is, this problem is scheduled to be fixed in Service Pack 3.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

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More Management Reporter 2012

The Dynamics Corporate Performance Management team over at Microsoft has been releasing information about specific features in Management Reporter 2012 for the past 2 weeks. I hope you are enjoying these just as much as I am. In my previous article I provided some links to the first 6 articles released. Here is a new set of links with more of the cool Management Reporter 2012 features:

• Drill to Dynamics GP
• Missing Account Analysis
• Financial Reporting Data Mart
• Lync Integration
• Drill to Dynamics AX 2012
• Install Experience
• Report Scheduling
• Dimension Sets

This new set of features should get you excited about the product and its capabilities. Can't wait to see the demo at Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2012.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

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GPUG Webinar: "Where do the experts turn for answers?"

Come join me this Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 1:00 PM EST (GMT -5:00), in this exciting Lunch and Learn Series session, sponsored by the GPUG, where I will be presenting what is rapidly becoming a key topic for the overall Microsoft Dynamics GP community: "Where do the experts turn for answers?".

When I was first approached by Kim Peterson, Director of GPUG, to present this topic at the past GPUG Summit in Las Vegas, NV, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, given that I have always delivered technical content at the various conferences I have had a chance to speak at. However, and in doing some research, I realized that the proliferation of blogs, social media, and what I would consider standard resources, such as CustomerSource and PartnerSource, only made the landscape more confusing for customers and partners alike. Also, I found that even with this arsenal of outlets, not everyone in the community is aware of the options. So there you had two constrasting sides: "There's too much information out there!" versus "Where do I go to find what I need?". The irony is, as a leading community expert, I also found myself asking these questions at some point in time.

If you want to find out more, please come join me this Tuesday. This event is open to GPUG members and you can register here.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

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Debugging Microsoft Dynamics GP Word Templates Revisited

Couple days aback, I went through an issue were Microsoft Word templates were being rendered to an html file, causing Internet Explorer to launch instead - see Word Templates rendering report in Internet Explorer. In troubleshooting this problem, I engaged my good friend Rob Wagner over at Microsoft, who showed me a few more tricks for troubleshooting issues around Word Templates and template rendering.

Also, some time ago I covered a troubleshooting tip in my article Debugging Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Word Templates. Back then I looked at the TPELogging Dex.ini key, which creates a log file in the temp folder (%temp%) where templates are rendered and loaded by Microsoft Word. TPELogging is used to establish where possible exceptions could have occur while rendering the actual template into a Word document.

While working with Rob, I learned about another Dex.ini key that can assist with the troubleshooting process:

KeepTemplateTempFiles=TRUE

This Dex.ini key allows Dexterity to persists the template in the temp folder once the Microsoft Word document has been created. Now, to see how this is useful, you need to keep in mind a few things about how Word Templates really works in Microsoft Dynamics GP.

When a template is created under the Report Template Maintenance window, the actual template XML representation is saved in the system database, DYNAMICS, in the syReportTemplates table (in a SQL Server binary data type column). This is all good, because in theory, once you create your template and saved it away from the temp folder into, say, My Documents, then reimport that template into Microsoft Dynamics GP, there will never be a chance of you loosing the changes you made even if you delete the physical template document (the DOCX).

With that said, when you print a template 3 things happen - well, to summarize anyways:

1. The Report Writer engine generates an XML data file if the report was setup to use a template.

2. The Word Template code takes over and reads the actual XML template representation in syReportTemplates, and recreates the physical Microsoft Word template document in your local temp folder.

3. Through Microsoft Word and Open XML automation, the physical template is applied to the XML data file to create the final Microsoft Word document, this is, your invoice, purchase order, or any other document you have decided to generate using a template.

When the final document is delivered, the code performs some cleanup by removing the template file (leaving you with the actual output document).

The KeepTemplateTempFiles key allows the Word Templates code to persist the generated template (in step 2 above). Should you run into any issues, you could potentially open the template file to compare against the document you originally worked on.

A couple words of caution...

If you choose to enable KeepTemplateTempFiles, be sure to disable it once you have completed all troubleshooting activities, since each time you print a document to a template, you will obtain a new template file for that print run. Overtime, you can have a very full temp folder should you not set the key value to FALSE. By default, Microsoft Dynamics GP has this key value turned off when it's not found in the Dex.ini file.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/

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