Comments on: Reporting on Extender data in Dynamics GP

By: About Dynamics, Development and Life

About Dynamics, Development and Life — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:42:57 +0000

Dynamics GP Customizations (Best Practices, Extender, Macros, Modifier)…

Dynamics GP has a trunk full of features, but there will be cases when you need to customize GP for certain…

By: Victoria Yudin

Victoria Yudin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:23:21 +0000

Hi Zafar,

Have you confirmed whether it’s an issue with GP security (so logging in as ‘sa’ or a power user on the same computer works, but logging in as another user does not) or with the computer/GP install (so logging in as ‘sa’ or a power user also does not work)?

-Victoria

By: Zafar Khan

Zafar Khan — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:17:08 +0000

Hi Victoria,
Thank you for writing such nice articles. I have issue where I hope you can solve. I created a extender window and have made sure that all of our staff can see it but due to some reason some of our staff are not able to see the extender window, niether by the hot keys nor by the Extras>Additional. It is greyed out for some of the staff.
Kindly advise.

By: Victoria Yudin

Victoria Yudin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:12:22 +0000

Dean,

Awesome! Thanks for following up and letting me know how you resolved this.

-Victoria

By: Dean Merza

Dean Merza — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:45:42 +0000

Hi Victoria, a day after your reply I tried the calculated field but still got the garbled data. I supposed you meant that the value of this calculated field simply equal the value of the original field, right? I decided to add this additional instruction: +” ” to include an additional space to the calculated field and it did the trick. Thanks for pointing me the right direction. Your such a great help to the GP community.

By: Victoria Yudin

Victoria Yudin — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:39:03 +0000

Dean,

Here is an update on this from Microsoft: this is a known issue (quality report 54219), but no timing on resolution yet. One additional way to get around this: in SmartList Builder create a calculated column for each field that is coming in with garbled data. In the formula for the calculated field, just point to the original field. Hide the original field and show the calculated field. Now you will see blanks instead of garbled data.

Not sure if this is better that altering the view, that might depend on how comfortable you are with SQL. Also not sure how/if having a lot of calculated fields will affect performance of the SmartList for large data sets.

-Victoria

By: Victoria Yudin

Victoria Yudin — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:16:30 +0000

Dean,

This is something that got broken in GP 10.0. Basically the issue is that SmartList in GP 10.0 does not know how to handle NULL values in the results. So it shows them as the garbled characters you are seeing. This will be the case for any SQL view you create, not just a view created from Extender.

If you were creating a view with your Extender window only, this would not be an issue. However, as soon as you link to a another table, like Customer Master, if there is not a corresponding Extender record for each customer, you are going to get NULLs in the SQL results and SmartList does what you’re seeing.

Unfortunately, the only way I know of to fix this is to alter the view in SQL to account for NULLs. I still think it’s better than writing the view from scratch, but it does add an additional step to this.

For your other question, I suppose if you had created an Extender Window, added it to a SmartList, then deleted that Extender Window, there could be some remnant data that you may not want in the database, however, this should be a very unlikely event, as Extender Windows should not just be added and deleted at will, there should be more planning and testing (in a separate environment) involved. And this extra data in most cases should not be hurting anyone. So, all things considered, I would opt for more functionality.

-Victoria

By: Dean Merza

Dean Merza — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:52:10 +0000

I followed the steps above and I was able to create and view the smartlist report, however on the blank fields I am getting this garbled data: aµ. Do you know why? I noticed that this data comes up on the fields assigned as short or long string in the extender window.

Also I was advised to not use the smartlist button in the extender window because it leaves behind unwanted data in the db and Microsoft does not have a fix for this yet. Is this still the case?

By: How to use a SQL view in SmartList Builder - Victoria Yudin

How to use a SQL view in SmartList Builder - Victoria Yudin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:29:24 +0000

[...] This blog – Reporting on Extender data in Dynamics GP [...]

By: Victoria Yudin

Victoria Yudin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:14:18 +0000

Vic,
Very good idea – I sometimes forget where we have notes added, so a visual cue would be great. Nothing I am aware of in Extender will have this feature. You could potentially add a window level note (available on just about every GP window) to let users know about the notes, but that seems a bit counter-intuitive. I think the only options to add any visual cue is with Modifier or a Dexterity customization.
-Victoria

By: vic

vic — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:44:33 +0000

Hi
I have an unrelated question about extender – I’ve just been playing around with it – one of the things I see as an issue is:
I setup additional notes – but a client using GP wouldn’t know the notes are there unless they click on the additional menu. is there any way to have something display on the actual window to show that there are additional notes?

thanks!

By: Steve Chapman

Steve Chapman — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:05:26 +0000

Great article, and a good, thorough example. I like your approach.

By: Mohammad R. Daoud : Victoria Yudin on Reporting on Extender Data

Mohammad R. Daoud : Victoria Yudin on Reporting on Extender Data — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:47:12 +0000

[...] MVP Victoria Yudin, goes to great lengths to explain how to report on Extender data. Extender can be a valuable time saving customization tool, but data storage can be confusing even [...]

By: Vaidy

Vaidy — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:51:24 +0000

Another good topic and a simple/complete narration. I considered this as a nightmare before I read this article, but not anymore.

Thanks
Vaidy

By: Reporting on Extender Data in Dynamics GP - DynamicAccounting.net

Reporting on Extender Data in Dynamics GP - DynamicAccounting.net — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:02:36 +0000

[...] on Extender Data in Dynamics GP Victoria Yudin has a great piece up covering reporting on Extender Data in Dynamics GP. Extender allows custom fields without having to write customizations but it's a pain to [...]