Another reason to attend Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2012... Daughtry!

If you are a fan of good rock music, then here's another reason for you to attend Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2012 in Houston, Texas... Daughtry will be live at the Convergence Reception.

Daughtry - from left to right: Robin Diaz (Drums), Josh Steely (Guitar), Chris Daughtry, Josh Paul (Bass), and Brian Craddock (Guitar)

Daughtry is an American rock band formed and fronted by American Idol Season 5 finalist Chris Daughtry in 2006. Their self-titled debut album was released in 2006. The disc reached number one for two non-consecutive weeks on the Billboard Top 200, sold more than four million copies and was named the number one selling album of 2007 by Billboard. Their album is also the fastest-selling debut rock album in Soundscan history. The first single from the album, "It's Not Over", was the eighth most played song across all formats on U.S. radio in 2007, and their second single from the album, "Home", was the tenth most played song in the U.S. of 2007. The band's second album, Leave This Town, was released in July 2009. The first single, "No Surprise," was released on May 5. "No Surprise" was written by Chris Daughtry with Chad Kroeger and Eric Dill. The band's third studio album, Break the Spell was released in November 2011.

On a personal note, I had a chance to see Daughtry opening for Bon Jovi at the Phillips Arena in Atlanta in Spring of 2008 and I have to say, these guys are superb artists and entertainers.

What are you waiting for? Register for Convergence now and don't miss the fun! Also, make sure you brush up on your Daughtry lyrics.

And now I leave you with one of my favorite Daughtry songs, "Over You" - and a question that's been lingering in my mind... how did this guy not win American Idol Season 5?

Until next post!

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

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Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2012 dates announced!

It's official! The Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2012 will be held in Fargo, ND from September 12 -14. As you know,  I have been a speaker and presenter at the previous Tech 2011 and Tech 2009 and, while not official yet, I will be looking to present at the this year's Technical Conference as well. The announcement came earlier today via Pam Misialek over at the Inside Microsoft Dynamics GP blog.

Disclaimer: The banner above is not an official Microsoft Tech Conference 2012 banner and was rendered based on the current Fargo Developer Conference site banner

Until next post!

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

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Microsoft Dynamics GP Add-In for Microsoft Word not enabling despite several attempts to install

Just recently, I ran into a situation with the Microsoft Dynamics GP Add-In for Microsoft Word where, after following all the installation steps and on-screen prompts, I could not get the Microsoft Dynamics GP Templates section to show up under the Developer's ribbon in Microsoft Word 2010.

Microsoft Dynamics GP Add-In for Microsoft Word properly registered in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Dynamics GP Add-In for Microsoft Word not registered in Microsoft Word

The customer was also running a 32-bit version of Microsoft Office, clearly indicating that the issue was not related to the version of the Office product being ran - Word Templates are still not fully compatible with 64-bit Office platforms.

A first troubleshooting step under these circumstances is to make sure that the Microsoft Dynamics GP Add-In for Microsoft Word is enabled under the COM Add-Ins window in Microsoft Word. You can access the COM Add-Ins window by clicking on the button of the same name on the Developer's ribbon - please refer to the first picture above.

COM Add-Ins window

When I highlighted the Microsoft Dynamics GP Add-in for Microsoft Word component, the Load Behavior indicated Not Loaded. A runtime error occurred during the loading of the COM Add-in. While this was not a good thing, it was also a good thing, since it provided me with a key piece of information: the add-in was effectively installed, just not loading/enabling for some reason. This brought the attempts to reinstall and repair to a halt which was a good thing.

So now, I needed to figure out why the add-in wasn't loading. I figured in this case it would be appropriate to fire up my good old friend Process Monitor (ProcMon) to get a glimpse into what was going on.

After (a good 2 hours!) running some traces by attaching ProcMon to the WINWORD.EXE process, I noticed that each time I launched Microsoft Word, it would try to find the Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.dll assembly when attempting to register the the GP add-in for Word. That was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel! In doing some additional research, that assembly is an integral part of the Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) Runtime. The version for Office 2010 is VSTO 4.0.

You can download VSTO 4.0 from the Microsoft Download Center.

For more information on VSTO 4.0 click here.

Hopefully this saves you a lot of frustrations.

Until next post!

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

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Management Reporter - The operation could not be completed due to failure on the server

What would be the New Year without a little drama?

I don't often write about Management Reporter, however, we just went live at a client site this past Tuesday, with everything working just as expected - by us and the client. However, just a few days working with their new environment, the client decided to run some of the financial reports we'd created with Management Reporter. Upon attempting to generate the report, the client received the following error:

Attempting to outrule any permissions issue, I ran the report with the SQL Server system admin (sa) account and got the same error.

Since the error was not descriptive enough, I turned to the Windows Applications Event Viewer and immediately spotted 3 entries. The first entry clearly stated the problem:

"Length of LOB data (678233) to be replicated exceeds configured maximum 65536. The statement has been terminated"

Because the exception was generated by a SQL client component, I could definitely rule out an issue with Management Reporter.

The second entry shows the service model fault exception messaging component that trapped the error and relied it to the Management Reporter component.

Application Event Viewer - 2nd Entry

The third entry showed the Management Reporter component that was directly affected by the cascading errors.

The original error message in the Event Viewer pointed to the length of the LOB data used for replication. This prompted me to think back for a bit and I realized that the hosting provider for my clients infrastructure and data had configured transactional replication in the past days based on the instructions provided in Microsoft Support article 926490.

Hence, it was not a surprise to me the error was referencing an issue with replication. In doing some extra search, I came across a SQL Server setting in the Advanced tab that allows you to set the Max Text Replication Size. By changing this value to -1, SQL Server would acknowledge no limit to the size of any character, XML, or image data type that could be replicated with a single insert or update operation.

The good thing also was, after setting the value, I did not have to restart the SQL Server service which made the client pretty happy as well. We re-ran the MR report and problem was gone!

Until next post!

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

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Why you need to attend Microsoft Dynamics Convergence

Microsoft Dynamics Convergence blog team member, Alexa Hoekstra invited me in past weeks to write an article on why you need to attend the event. The article is finally up on the Community website. I must say, I was very excited to write this piece as it includes pictures reflecting my experiences from past Convergence events, in hopes of providing some context to my article.

Read the article here.

Personally, I believe it turned out to be a good piece!

NOTE: you know you have written a good article when fellow MVP Mark Polino decides to add his own spin to it - read Mark's stub here.

Until next post!

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

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Congratulations to Victoria Yudin!

I didn't want to let the opportunity pass by to send shout outs to Victoria Yudin for achieving a record 8 consecutive years as a Microsoft Dynamics GP MVP. Please continue to support Victoria's work in the community by acquiring a copy of her Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Implementation book.

A personal dream of mine is to see Victoria presenting at Convergence... maybe I should start a poll asking you, the reader, if you would like to see her present at this event.

Until next post!

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

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

Back from much needed vacations, I had some time to reflect back on the body of work done in 2011 in the Microsoft Dynamics GP community. The truth is, it was very hectic, with the Tech Conference 2011 in Fargo, Convergence 2011 Atlanta, Decisions Spring and Fall editions, and the GPUG Summit in Las Vegas, not to mention 158 articles on this blog along with the comments I received (plus 365000 hits!), thousands of Partner Technical Forum posts, my new YouTube channel, and much, much more.

As you can imagine, that kind of effort is represented and supported by hundreds and hundreds of hours, which are very hard to carve out with a full-time job and family activities. However, it makes it all the more rewarding.

Starting anew in 2012 makes me think about how difficult it will be to surpass what I did last year, but as I always say, I love a challenge when I see one! I'm already booked for Convergence 2012 Houston, Decisions Spring 2012, GPUG Summit 2012 Seattle, and Decisions Fall 2012, and as you can imagine, preparation is already on the way for these events... and really, I want to finish my book. I know, this is a missing item on my community resume.

Anyways, it's time to start working on all these goals, so let's see how I fare this time around next year.

Until next post!

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

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