Category: SmartConnect

SmartConnect Scheduled Integration Regularly Failed

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

eOne SolutionsA client reported that a SmartConnect integration they’d been using for a couple of years had started failing regularly. It was scheduled to run in the early hours on every week day, but was failing most of the time; oddly, it was working sometimes.

If the integration was run manually it ran successfully every single time. When running on the schedule it failed more often than not.

There was an error writing to the pipe: Unrecognized error 232 (0xe8)

We made two changes to the setup after which the issue was resolved and the integration ran successfully.

We gave the service account permissions on SmartConnect database and we changed format of the service account from user@domain to domain\user.

The puzzling aspect of this error was that neither the service account nor the assigned permissions had been changed. Or at least no-one with the ability to make changes admitted to having done so.

PrintFriendlyLinkedin

eOne Support Lifecycle Policy for SmartConnect

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

eOne SolutionsI only recently became aware of the lifecycle policy which eOne Solutions use for SmartConnect on-premise.

For SmartConnect 2018 and before the product is supported for three years on standard support and a further two years for extended support.

This means that SmartConnect 2018 is only under support until 15th December 2022; this means if you are using SmartConnect 2018 then you only have support on the product for another five months.

Versions of SmartConnect after 2018 use the “Modern Lifecycle Policy” which requires that customers stay current by always being on a supported release of SmartConnect which means applying at least one of the SmartConnect all-inclusive updates released within the last year from the current date. Basically, under the Modern Lifecycle you need to be applying one update per year for SmartConnect to remain on a supported version.

This ties in with the Microsoft Dynamics GP Modern Lifecycle which also requires an annual upgrade to be on a supported version.

PrintFriendlyLinkedin

SmartConnect Crashes When Trying to Run Integration into Microsoft Dynamics GP

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

eOne SolutionsI dealt with a support issue for a client recently where they were reporting that one user could integrate into all but two companies in Microsoft Dynamics GP, but other users couldn’t integrate into any.

The problem is that when they tried an integration which failed, SmartConnect simply crashed with nothing in any error logs in either SmartConnect or Windows.

As it was working in some databases and not others for one user and not at all for other users, it had to be permissions. The user who could use SmartConnect was the one involved in the implementation and the companies he could use it in were the oldest; the two companies which failed were the newest.

We did some checking and found that the user who could run some integrations had his domain account created as a SQL login and had been granted the DYNGRP security role on the company databases; he had not been added to the companies which failed. When we added the security for these databases the integration ran successfully.

We recommended to the client that instead of adding individual users to SQL Server and giving them access to databases they consider creating some AD security groups which had access assigned and they could then grant those roles to users as required.

PrintFriendlyLinkedin

SmartConnect 2021 – The source was not found, but some or all of the event logs could not be searched

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

eOne SolutionsEarlier this year I added SmartConnect from eOne Solutions to a new demo vm (I’m a bit behind with posts). I was able to create the data source and integration without any issues, but then encountered an error when running any of the integrations in SmartConnect:

SmartConnect Progress window showing the error

The source was not found, but some or all event logs could not be searched. To create the source, you need permission to real all event logs and to make sure that the new source name is unique.  Inaccessible logs: Security

On a new installation, permissions isn’t all that unusual and was confirmed when I found a post from eOne on their knowledge base with steps to resolve.

The fix is to add the service account user to the local administrators group on the machine on which SmartConnect is being run and then launch SmartConnect using right click, run as administrator. You only need to run it as admin the first time after adding the service account as a local admin.

PrintFriendlyLinkedin

SmartConnect 2021 Error: “HTTP Error 500.19 – Internal Server Error”

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

eOne SolutionsI’ve been doing some work with a client recently implementing SmartConnect 2021, although the client has done much of the install themselves using the manual as a guide (this was their choice to help keep costs down). When we tried to enable the REST API and navigate to the endpoint to check, we were receiving an error:

HTTP Error 500.19 – Internal Server Error

The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.

We did some investigation and research and found that the issue was that one of the required features had been missed during the installation. There are three elements of the WCF Services component of the .NET Framework 4.7 Features which need to be installed, but weren’t.

The screenshot below shows my demo system with the three components installed:

Server Manager - Add Roles and Features Wizard

Once the client added these three components, the REST API worked correctly.

PrintFriendlyLinkedin

SmartConnect 2021 Error With Excel Data Sources: “Data source name not found and no default driver specified”

Ian Grieve3 minute read0 comment

eOne SolutionsWe’ve recently upgraded a client from SmartConnect 2018 to SmartConnect 2021 and mosstly had no problems. One issue which came up is when users tried to run an integration which had a Microsoft Excel file as the data source. Each time they tried the integration, and on several machines, they always received the same error:

Error running integration

Connection could not be validated
ERROR [IM002] [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified

This is an error I have seen before; the users in the previous case who were having problems had the 64-bit version of Microsoft Office installed and the working ones had the 32-bit version. this required us to install the 32-bit version of the Microsoft Access Database Engine 2016 Redistributable from the command line as a silent install.

All of the clients in this case already had a 32-bit version of Excel; a quick check and I found that for SmartConnect 2021 you actually need the 64-bit version of the Microsoft Access Database Engine 2016 Redistributable which again should be installed silently from the command line.

PrintFriendlyLinkedin

Recent ISC Software Webinar: Automation in Microsoft Dynamics GP

Ian Grieve4 minute read0 comment

ISC Software SolutionsIn our most recent webinar, we took a look at Automation in Microsoft Dynamics GP. In this webinar, we covered how automation can be used in Microsoft Dynamics GP to improve efficiencies and accuracy of data. 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 cover the highlights of how automation can be used in Microsoft Dynamics GP to improve efficiencies and improve data accuracy:

  1. Introduction
  2. Integration
  3. Scanning
  4. Approval
  5. Posting
  6. Reporting
  7. Conclusion

Introduction ^

Where possible in this webinar I highlighted standard, or Microsoft supplied, features or additional products where they are available. However, in many cases the standard functionality does not allow for full automation. This is an intentional design choice made when Microsoft Dynamics GP was first created back in the md-90s. The company who created Great Plains, the original name of Dynamics GP, was intended from the very beginning to be extensible with the intention that there be a thriving third-party marketplace for add-ons.

This is the current situation; the core Dynamics GP system has strong core financials and distribution modules, but wider functionality is provided by third party (Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who have a variety of add-ons and complimentary products which provide the functionality required or automating processes. In each of the areas, there are usually a number of products available from several vendors, but I have selected one in each area. usually an add-on which I have used with several clients across a number of years and which has received positive reviews.

Before implementing one of the solutions, I’d recommend reviewing the functionality it includes, the functionality of competing products and making your own decision about which will best fit your requirements.

Continue reading “Recent ISC Software Webinar: Automation in Microsoft Dynamics GP”

PrintFriendlyLinkedin

What Data Can SmartConnect Integrate into Microsoft Dynamics GP?

Ian Grieve2 minute read0 comment

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business CentralI’ve worked with a number of clients on SmartConnect from eOne Solutions this year as well as discussing with a few prospects. SmartConnect is a very flexible tool which can be used to integrate many different types of data. In this respect, it competes with the Microsoft Integration Manager product, but SmartConnect has many other features over Integration Manager.

Discussions on SmartConnect usually involve the question as to what data can be integrated by it into Dynamics GP; the short answer is if eConnect can do it then so can SmartConnect, but few people (including me) remember all of the nodes available within eConnect. As would be expected, this is also a common question direct to eOne, and one which Lorren Zemke addressed on the eOne blog: Tech Tuesday : What Data Can SmartConnect Integrate in Dynamics GP (eConnect).

PrintFriendlyLinkedin

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.

Continue reading “SmartConnect Service Won’t Start”

PrintFriendlyLinkedin

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.

PrintFriendlyLinkedin