RIP Apture - I Will Miss You

How many of my blog readers remember about my blog being enabled with Apture Highlights?

It's very sad that this beautiful feature is now no more. I got to know this long back, but the feature that I added on my blog still worked; until this morning.

You check out Apture's Site. All you got to see is a message from Apture Team as below:

I am not sure what to express, but only one thing which I feel right now is this: Google, you have successfully killed one more beautiful product.

RIP Apture. I loved your features. I loved the way you simplified my vocabulary learning. I loved the way you just simply popped out of the web page without taking me to any other site. I loved the way you were just a simple yet catchy product called Apture. I was so in awe that I put your logo on my blog and proudly claimed that my blog got "Aptured".

Not any more.

I will surely miss you.

VAIDY

Test Company Posting Journal File Destinations

One thing we all must remember while restoring a Live Company DB onto a Test Company DB is, that several places in GP tables, Company ID is stored. We have a SQL Script that will search ALL tables and ALL columns that contain the Inter ID (SQL ID for each GP database) and replace the live DB ID with test DB ID.

This post explains some specific cases where the Posting Journals of all transaction types are destined to a text file. Typically, in a multi-company environment, consultants would setup the path for all Posting Journals with the respective company Inter ID (or any folder name that uniquely identify each company).

I will explain you an ideal scenario, where this poses an issue.

I would restore live backup onto a Test Company and run the SQL script that will replace all live company ID references to test company ID. But my Posting Journals File destination is a simple string value, something like below (I have taken Purchase as a sample series):

:C:Journals/[CompanyID]/Purchase/[JournalReportName].txt

So if my live company ID is, for instance, VMLIVE, then the above path would like this:

:C:Journals/VMLIVE/Purchase/JournalReportName.txt

Whenever I post a purchase transaction, my Posting Journal detail would go and get append on this file, which I can audit at any point of time.

Now, consider that my Test Company ID is VMTEST. When I restore my live backup onto my test company and run the SQL script which replace live company reference with test company ID, everything would get fixed except this. Since the value stored in File Destination field in the Posting Journal Destinations table (SY02200) is NOT JUST the company ID, but the above Filename with Path.

After restoration and I post a purchase transaction on my test company, the posting information get appended on the file JournalReportName.txt on the path C:\Journals\VMLIVE\Purchase, which is WRONG. It's not just wrong. Your posting journal file gets dumped with test entries as well as live entries. If any client audits the Posting Journal files as part of their internal process(es), then it's a big trouble.

In such scenarios, where all posting journals are destined to a text file on a path identified specifically by a company ID or name, the GP Administrator must make sure that the field FILEXPNM (File Export Name) on table SY02200 (Posting Journal Destinations) must be properly updated before we post any test entires. Below is the simple UPDATE statement which would fix this:

UPDATE SY02200
SET FILEXPNM = REPLACE(FILEXPNM, '[LiveCompanyID/Name]', '[TestCompanyID/Name]')

Where [LiveCompanyID/Name] denotes the value which identifies your Live Company and [TestCompanyID/Name] denotes the value which identifies your Test Company.

VAIDY

To all Budding GP developers - Screen Resolution Does Matter

This is very silly point, but quite a huge dampener when it comes to Customer satisfaction.

I had given a simple customization as a trial to a budding developer as part of an exercise. I received the chunk to test it out.

What I could see was a huge window containing almost 50-75 fields (including labels, several text boxes, etc.) with lot screen real estate being wasted between fields. Secondly, this window went out of my test machine's screen space. The only possibility for that, in my opinion, is the resolution of the developer's machine was way too higher than my test machine's screen resolution.

Always, keep in mind, that when you develop a customization on a computer with higher resolution than that of the customers', it's going to be an issue. Customer would have to scroll horizontally each time to enter or view data on each field. And trust me, that's very irritable than a bad and buggy customization itself.

Always, try to limit the window size that would fit inside a 1024 X 768 screen resolution (that's the lowest that I feel is still existing in this universe), so it would fit in almost all resolutions.

This possibly be a non-issue soon with technology being so advanced nowadays and customers are willing to shed out some bucks on higher resolution & wide screen monitors.

But you never know.

VAIDY

Support Debugging Tool (SDT) v11.0 Build 16 is Released

We have a bundle of features and enhancements added to SDT and the new version v11.0 Build 16 is released.

David has a write up on this release with exhaustive details.

Sure this is going to be more useful than previous versions.

VAIDY

Welcome 2012...!

My heartfelt wishes to entire GP Community... Happy, Prosperous, Successful & Peaceful 2012...!!!

Most part of 2011 was quite dull, especially the later period, due to various professional and personal commitments. I would like to change it this year and be active as much as possible.

Wishes again for a wonderful 2012.

VAIDY