This is a repost of an original article by Jason Carr from August 2009 that I found very useful but is no longer available online. Originally published as
Thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine I was able to recover the last version of the article from November 2020 and am posting it here as a reference.
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I have been fairly quiet recently on the blog and forums as I have been concentrating on developing the next build of GP Power Tools. All I can say is that it is awesome and you will love it. I have a “Sneak Peak” article coming soon.
While working on the development and testing process, I had some unusual behaviour from my .Net Visual Studio Tools Addins and spent an entire day troubleshooting the issue so I could identify the cause and work out a solution. Read on for the gory details….
The release of Build 15 of the free product Visual Studio IntegrationToolkit is a bonus to Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP developers around the globe.
As well as the enhancements to the Menu Navigation functionality and the addition of support for custom Area Pages, Build 15 adds a new Helper functions module with over 220 functions.
This build is the result of a month’s development effort and is why you have not heard much from me on the blog recently.
You might have seen my posts on Twitter and Facebook recently about my new toy mini laptop PC, the crowd funded GPD Pocket 2.
I have been burnt before with crowd funded projects (I supported 3 smartwatches and only one make it to production and it under-delivered 🙁 ), so I was wary of getting involved again. However, this was the second generation of the GPD Pocket and demo devices had already been delivered to a number of YouTube reviewers. I felt fairly safe to get involved with crowd funding again, as this would give me a discount and get the device earlier.
I recently had issues with one of my products and need to share the cause of the issue and the solution with the Microsoft Dynamics GP development community.
I made changes to all my products late last year, introducing a new registration system. The code uses Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP addin DLLs written in Visual C# to handle all the communication with the appropriate registration server.
With the addition of Service Based Architecture (SBA) into Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015 and later, Dexterity global procedures can be marked as Service Enabled.
This allows a Dexterity global procedure to be a Service procedure which is exposed as a REST based web service via Service Base Architecture.
I am writing this article after seeing the side effects of Visual Studio Tools developers not following Best Practice when adding references to their projects.
Two mistakes made by the developer in this example resulted in Microsoft Dynamics GP failing to launch with the “An exception occurred while trying to load or initialize the addin” error.
I am pleased to announce that the next build of the Batch Posting Service Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP (BSPT) is now available for download.
The Batch Posting Service Toolkit provides service procedures to retrieve a list of Batch Numbers for a specified Batch Source and to post the batch for a specified Batch Source and Batch Number.
Use the tool to post newly integrated transaction batches real time using calls from Dexterity, Visual Studio Tools or as a Service Based Architecture (SBA) Web Service (for v14.0 or later).
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR ALL USERS OF VISUAL STUDIO INTEGRATION TOOLKIT
This article is to announce a new build of the Visual Studio Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP (VSIT) is now available for download.
This new build coincides with the change in ordering and support for Visual Studio Integration Toolkit. From now on, Winthrop Development Consultants is handling all distribution and support for Visual Studio Integration Toolkit directly. Mekorma will no longer be involved with this free product.
Hey Developers… Are you attending the GPUG Summit 2017 conference in Nashville, Tennessee in October? If so, this article is to let you know about Microsoft Dynamics GP related Developer content at the conference.
I asked why there was not much content for developers at GPUG Summit and I was told that there are not many developers in attendance. I disagreed and requested a session for Developers, which Bob McAdam promptly organised … thanks Bob. 🙂
From the team that brought you Friday Funny: I Want My MVP.
From the developers of PostMaster…. comes an amazing new customisation tool….
Yes, Andrew Dean from Envisage Software along with Steve Endow MVP from Precipio Services have been busy working away on some really cool technology for Visual Studio Tools developers and have just released it as a free tool.
I recently received feedback about Visual Studio Integration Toolkit complaining that the tool requires registration for each customer site it is being used at.
I wanted to take an opportunity to respond to the feedback with some history and facts about the product that will explain why it now requires registration.
For the Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP developers out there, I am pleased to announce that the next build of the Visual Studio Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP (VSIT) is now available for download.
The Visual Studio Integration Toolkit was previously known as Menus for Visual Studio Tools (MVST), which was discontinued in October 2014. If you are still using the previous product, please upgrade to the supported product.
I am pleased to announce that the next build of the Batch Posting Service Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP (BSPT) is now available for download.
The Batch Posting Service Toolkit provides service procedures to retrieve a list of Batch Numbers for a specified Batch Source and to post the batch for a specified Batch Source and Batch Number.
It is designed to be used to post newly integrated batches of transactions real time and can be called via Dexterity, Visual Studio Tools or as a Service Based Architecture (SBA) Web Service (for v14.0 or later).
Great news for Visual Studio developers.
Winthrop Development Consultants are pleased to announce the release of the Visual Studio Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP (VSIT).
The Visual Studio Integration Toolkit replaces Menus for Visual Studio Tools and is now available for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010, Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 (including GP 2013 R2) and also for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015.
Have you ever written some cool Visual Studio Tools (VST) code that worked great on the desktop client, but does not work on the web client? VST code that does not use any WinForms or uses WinForms but only with supported controls and so should work?
Well, I have. A great example is the Company Login window customisations covered in the blog posts below:
The code worked fine on the desktop client, but had no effect in the web client. Something was missing, but I did not know what.
Following on from my last post, Customising the Company Login window series – Visual Studio Tools revisited – Visual C#, where I completed the Customising the Company Login window customisation using Visual Studio and Visual C#, I wanted to create the same example using Visual Basic .Net.
Thanks to Tim Wappat from the Dynamic Coding Blocks blog for his post which helped me get past the issues I was having accessing the Continuum Integration Library:
Just before I left Microsoft, I was writing a series of blog articles about Customising the Company Login window so that you could see the full company name in the drop down list for long company names.
I had shown how to achieve the customisation with Dexterity and with Visual Basic for Applications, but was having problems getting it to work from Visual Studio Tools.