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Tools for Customizing Great Plains by: Divine Rigor Microsoft Business Solutions '“ Great Plains has captured the US market with its integrated business applications for small and mid-size organizations. Its comprehensive accounting and business management capabilities provide businesses with tools to customize various modules of the Great Plains software. These tools have been proven to have contributed to business growth and tighter control over its processes. There are several ways in which customization and integration can be applied to Great Plains applications because of its open architecture characteristic. Integrity of data and performance of processes can also be validated using one of the many tools as listed in this article. So how do we answer the question of Customizing Great Plains? Dexterity Although Dexterity requires the user an extensive knowledge in software development (primarily in C/C++ or Pascal) and experience in scripting languages (VBScript, or Dexterity's own script - SanScript), this proprietary programming language that Great Plains was developed in allows access to all of Great Plains resources such as tables, reports and scripts. With this access, you can manipulate and define triggers such as opening a form or leaving a field. Moreover, it can be used to call up procedures and functions and create new applications without interfering with other customizations already in place and integrate them into Great Plains user interface easily. Dexterity can be installed using CD #2 that comes with the Great Plains 7.5 package. Modifier with VBA Modifier with VBA is one of the simplest tools to have for end-users and developers alike. It uses common graphic drawing techniques which can be used to alter the appearance of a Great Plains application. It can be used to move, alter or delete menus within a window so that you can manipulate the importance of each field. It also allows for addition of new windows or controls or simply rearranging those that exists. This customization tool is safe to use since the original information is stored separately from the modified one. Modifications can also be shared with other users. However, unlike Dexterity, it is not recommended to create new applications with Modifier VBA. Continuum for VBA/Delphi This tool uses Great Plains as an OLE Server. It captures the VB or Delphi code as queried by the user for macro recording. However, we do not recommend it since it is an old technology. Crystal Reports Great Plains comes with its own Report Writer. However, its functionality is limited. Introducing Crystal Reports to Great Plains opens up a whole new world of creating reports. With the use of the Crystal Report Designer Interface, you can easily create complex reports with formatting and grouping just the way you want it '“ professionally done. Grouped data can be summarized and subtotaled and with its drill-down capabilities, the user can view report data in detail. Crystal Reports also came up with a version for Visual Studio .NET. With all the features of Crystal Reports 8.'0
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