Month: December 2020

Hide Chrome Download Bar

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

Chromium logoI’ve been using Vivaldi as my main browser since v1 was first launched (and used the beta before that), but sometimes need to use a second browser.

Vivaldi have made extensive changes to the UI (written their own and used the Chromium renderer?), but all of the other Chromium browsers I’ve tried all have very similar UIs which suggests they aren’t deviating much from the default. This Include Microsoft Edge and Brave.

One of the things which really annoys me is the download bar which appears at the bottom of the screen whenever you download a file and which cannot be switched off; Vivaldi has a sidebar which appears when you download a file, but this is easy to switch off.

The stock answer seems to any UI issue with Chromium based browsers, is to download an extension. I looked at a handful of extensions to disable the download bar and finally selected Disable Download Bar as one which worked reasonably well.

I do much prefer the Vivaldi approach, which is why this remains my default browser on every machine I use and on which I have install rights.

SmartConnect Service Won’t Start

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business CentralThis is an issue which I encountered a while ago, but only recently found the screenshots when doing some tidying up. When I installed SmartConnect I had a problem whereby the service would not start.

I’d followed my usual implementation steps, but was receiving this error when trying to start the service:

Service start error

Services
The eOne SmartConnect Service service on Local Computer started and then stopped. Some services stop automatically if they are not in use by other services or programs.

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SmartConnect Error: “The delete permission was denied on the object…”

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business CentralA while back a client using SmartConnect reported an error running one integration; this is one of a set of newly created identical integrations running against a set of companies, but only one of them was failing.

The error produced was:

SmartConnect error

Task xxxx failed. Map run will end reporting failure. The DELETE permission was denied on the object 'xxxx', database 'xxxx', schema 'dbo'

As there was a reference to permssions, I assumed there would be a SQL issue; when looking through database permissions, I found that in one database the user account used by SmartConnect had the db_denydatawriter role membership assigned:

Database User permissions

Once this permission was removed, the integration ran successfully.

SmartConnect could not find data

Ian Grieve2 minute read2 Comments

eOne SolutionsI recently created an integration using SmartConnect for a client as I have many times before; however, when I came to test the integration, my source file was totally ignored and the integration returned an error that no file was found.

The integration was using a folder data source with an Excel template; nothing special and something which I have configured many times. I copied the template file into the source folder and tried the integration again and got the same result.

I asked another consultant on the team to take a look with me and neither of us could see a problem; everything looked correct. Then it occurred to me that the extension of the file was .XLSX which I would not expect to be a problem; but, we couldn’t see anything else, so changed the extension to .xlsx and tried the integration again.

It worked correctly. I didn’t expect the case of the file extension to cause a problem, but is something to definitely bear in mind in the future and to make sure clients are aware.

Missing Security Roles and Tasks After Upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics GP Fall 2020 Release

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics GPWhen upgrading Microsoft Dynamics GP, the security roles and tasks are not automatically updated; this is to avoid overwriting or causing problems with any customizations to these roles and tasks which might have been made. Instead Microsoft provide a set of scripts which you can choose to run to add the missing items.

I always recommend clients not directly amend the standard tasks, but make copies and amend the copy (this provides a way to roll back to the standard versions should there be a need).

The update scripts are available from the Dynamics GP Support and Services Blog and I have updated my links on the GP Missing Security Scripts page to link to that blog and the script directly; if you’re using an additional product such as Project Accounting, Enhanced Intrastat, VAT Daybook or HR & Payroll there are additional scripts on the blog post which you can run.

Installing Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Changing the IP Address

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

Raspberry PiI recently built a Raspberry Pi and installed Pi-hole onto it for my Dad. I did all of the work at my house and then took it down to his to install onto his network. I had an issue with doing this as it was not picking up a new IP address (it took me a while to work out that this was the problem).

Not knowing Linux very well, it took me longer than it would have done with a Windows machine to work out the solution. I spent some time searching online and came up with three commands which are run at the command line (once you’ve connected using SHH; IPv6 was working, but not IPv4 , so I was able to connect to the Pi, but not give the router the IP for use as the DNS Server).

  1. Show current IP address assignment: 
    ipaddr
  2. To release the current IP address: 
    sudo dhclient -r eth0
  3. To request a new IP address: 
    sudo dhclient -1 eth0

The above is basically the equivalent of ipconfig /renew on Windows.

Adventures With A Raspberry Pi

Adventures With A Raspberry Pi
Building The Raspberry Pi: CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Complete Starter Kit
Building The Raspberry Pi: Raspberry Pi Build
Building The Raspberry Pi: Install Operating System
Building The Raspberry Pi: First Run
Building The Raspberry Pi: System Configuration Tool
Building The Raspberry Pi: Enable SSH For Remote Access
Building The Raspberry Pi: Securing the Raspberry Pi
Building The Raspberry Pi: Conclusion
Installing Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: What is Pi-hole?
Installing Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Install Pi-hole
Installing Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Change Pi-hole Admin Password
Installing Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Configure Network to use Pi-hole
Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Blocked Adverts
Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Admin Interface
Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Disabling Pi-hole
Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Whitelisting a Site
Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Update Blocklists
Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Maintain Blocklists
Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Change DNS Servers
Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Connecting With SSH
Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Updating the Pi-hole
Using Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Conclusion
What Else Can I Use It For?
Prepare New SD Card For Raspberry Pi OS: Download SD Card Formatter
Prepare New SD Card For Raspberry Pi OS: Install SD Card Formatter
Prepare New SD Card For Raspberry Pi OS: Format SD Card
Prepare New SD Card For Raspberry Pi OS: Download NOOBS
Prepare New SD Card For Raspberry Pi OS: Copy Files To The SD Card
Prepare New SD Card For Raspberry Pi OS: Conclusion
Installing Pi-hole On A Raspberry Pi: Changing the IP Address
Raspberry PI Update Fails
Check Version of OS on Raspberry Pi
How to Update the OS on a Raspberry Pi

Workfow Submit button on PM Transaction Entry not working in Microsoft Dynamics GP

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics GPI’ve been doing some work with a client to implement the Workflow module of Microsoft Dynamics GP for approvals of Payables Transactions and encountered an oddity; when the user creates a transactions and hits Submit, nothing happens, but was not able to reproduce this on any of my demo or test systems.

There was a customised window in use on the client system, so I removed this and tried with the standard window and got exactly the same result. Some more testing showed that when the action pane was disabled and the old style toolbar being used, the Submit button was missing.

I had tried a 2018 RTM versaion and not been able to reproduce, but this was becuase I had one setting diferent. In Payables Management Setup (Purchasing area page » Setup » Payables Management), my systems were all set to allow the voucher number to be overridden, but the client had disabled this option.

When we changed this setting in their test company, the workflow submit worked correctly.

I did some further checking and was able to confirm that this is a bug in the Dynamics GP 2018 version which was resolved in the R2 version; the workaround is to allow the voucher number to be overridden and the solution is to upgrade.

Fortunately, we are already talking to this client about upgrading Microsoft Dynamics GP to the latest version; in the short-term they’ll allow override in test while the build and test of the workflows are complete and the deploy to live should tie in with the upgrade project.

Microsoft Dynamics GP Analytical Accounting Open Transactions SQL Query

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics GPI was looking into a problem reported by a client recently and needed to check the assignment of Analytical Accounting Transaction Dimension Codes to the AA GL transactions and so wrote the below SQL which I am posting to keep it easily accessible should I need it again.

/*
Created by Ian Grieve of azurecurve | Ramblings of an IT Professional (http://www.azurecurve.co.uk)
This code is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Int).
*/
SELECT
	*
FROM
	AAG30000 AS aaGLHdr
INNER JOIN
	AAG30001 AS aaGLDist
		ON
			aaGLDist.aaGLHdrID = aaGLHdr.aaGLHdrID
INNER JOIN
	AAG30002 AS GLAssign
		ON
			GLAssign.aaGLHdrID = aaGLDist.aaGLHdrID
		AND
			GLAssign.aaGLDistID = aaGLDist.aaGLDistID
INNER JOIN
	AAG30003 AS aaGLCode
		ON
			aaGLCode.aaGLHdrID = GL Assign.aaGLHdrID
		AND
			aaGLCode.aaGLDistID = GLAssign.aaGLDistID
		AND
			aaGLCode.aaGLAssignID = GLAssign.aaGLAssignID
INNER JOIN
	AAG00401 AS aaTrxDimCodeSetp
		ON
			aaTrxDimCodeSetp.aaTrxDimID = aaGLCode.aaTrxDimID
		AND
			aaTrxDimCodeSetp.aaTrxDimCodeID = aaGLCode.aaTrxCodeID

Recent ISC Software Webinar: Year-End Best Practice in Microsoft Dynamics GP

Ian Grieve5 minute read0 comment

ISC Software SolutionsIn our most recent webinar, we took a look at Year-End Best Practice in Microsoft Dynamics GP. In this webinar, we covered how some key points to action or consider before starting, the order in which the year end should be run before running through the closing process in each of the standard modules in Microsoft Dynamics GP covering not only what to do. but also what the year-end closing process does. If you want to catch up on this, or any other, webinar, you can do so here.

In this blog post, I am going to recap the webinar and include some links to documentation from Microsoft which will expand on some areas with more detail. The topics I’ll cover are:

  1. Key Points
  2. Year-End Processing Order
  3. Year-End Closing steps by module
  4. Conclusion

Key Points ^

There are five key points I always stress when discussing year-end closes with clients:

  1. Always have a good backup before starting a year-end close and take another after the year-end close has completed – a good backup is defined as one which you know will successfully restore; unfortunately I’ve worked with more than one client over the years who created a maintenance plan to take backups, but then, when the need came, found that the backups were not valid and could not be restored.
    Taking a backup before starting means you can easily revert back should there be a problem in the close; taking a backup after the close completes, means that if problems encountered later in the day that you can revert back to after the close has completed instead of having to repeat the close.
  2. Make sure all users log out of the company in which the year-end is being processed.
  3. Make sure there is sufficient space for database files to double in size; one significant cause of this is that the GL year-end close will copy data from Year-to-Date Transaction Open (GL20000) to Account Transaction History (GL30000) and during this process the data will exist in two places causing the database to grow.
  4. Perform a trial year-end close on a copy of live in test before closing the year-end on live; this will allow you to verify that there are no issues which might require a roll-back.
  5. Once one of the Year-End Closes has been started, be patient and allow it to run to completion. When processing, the close might cause Dynamics GP to white-screen, but this is just a sign that there is a lot of server-side processing underway and not that there is a problem.

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