Upcoming Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Knowledge Hub Webinars (Feb-Apr 2024) from MADIC dynamics

MADIC dynamicsEvery month, on the third Tuesday, at MADIC dynamics we will be presenting a Knowledge Hub Webinar on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and related products; I will be presenting the first few webinars, but in future other consultants will be getting involved, so there will be a variety of presenters through time.

We aim to have the next three monthly Knowledge Hub Webinars scheduled and details of them available; the webinars are open to everyone, not just customers of MADIC dynamics. The next three webinars, starting this month, are:

No february-2024 events found.

No march-2024 events found.

No april-2024 events found.

New Book on Jet Reports with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Available

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business CentralI have a new book available now called Jet Reports with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central; this book is aimed at end-users or consultants looking to use Jet Reports with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central for financial and/or operational reporting.

The book covers the basics of installing and configuring Jet Reports as well as how to design and build reports using the Excel Add-in, before moving on to step-by-step guides on creating six different types of report and closing with a look at the report building tools, Jet Hub and report distribution.

Jet Reports with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central by Ian Grieve

The book is available as an eBook direct from my azurecurve Publishing site (always with a discount of $5, but this month with an additional discount of 15% using voucher code JulyWithBCJuly) or from Amazon:

The book is structured into these chapters:

  • Chapter 1, Introduction to Jet Reports, introduces Jet Reports and explains what type of reporting for which it can be used.
  • Chapter 2, Implementing Jet Reports, covers the installation of Jet Reports including the Jet Service Tier and Jet Hub.
  • Chapter 3, Configuring Jet Reports, shows how to configure Jet Reports once it has been installed.
  • Chapter 4, Introducing the Excel Add-in, introduces the Excel Add-in and the features available.
  • Chapter 5, Report Structure, shows how reports can be structured to make maintaining them easier.
  • Chapter 6, Using the functions in the Excel Add-in, shows how each of the four Jet Functions can be used.
  • Chapter 7, Creating and using an Options page, covers the creation and use of an options page in reports.
  • Chapter 8, Create a Summary Trial Balance, steps through the creation of a Summary Trial Balance report.
  • Chapter 9, Create a Detailed Trial Balance, shows how to make the Summary TB from the previous chapter into a Detailed report.
  • Chapter 10, Create a Balance Sheet, covers the creation of a formatted Balance Sheet.
  • Chapter 11, Create an Income Statement, covers the creation of an Income Statement and how to make it an intercompany/consolidated version.
  • Chapter 12, Create a Summary Payables Aged Trial Balance, shows how to create a Summary Payables Trial Balance report.
  • Chapter 13, Create a Sales Invoice by Customer Report, covers the creation of an operational report on sales invoices.
  • Chapter 14, Report Creation Tools, introduces the tools which can be used to make creating reports easier.
  • Chapter 15, Using Jet Hub, shows how users can access Jet Reports via web access and without a local install of Jet Reports.
  • Chapter 16, Report Distribution, shows how users can schedule or generate reports into Microsoft Word.

If you buy the ebook from me directly, the coupon code JetWithBCJuly will get you 15% off the price of this book (offer available until the end of July 2023).

New book on Jet Reports with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central available

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business CentralI have a new book available now called Jet Reports with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central; this book is aimed at end-users or consultants looking to use Jet Reports with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central for financial and/or operational reporting.

The book covers the basics of installing and configuring Jet Reports as well as how to design and build reports using the Excel Add-in, before moving on to step-by-step guides on creating six different types of report and closing with a look at the report building tools, Jet Hub and report distribution.

Jet Reports with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central by Ian Grieve

The book is available as an eBook direct from my azurecurve Publishing site or from Amazon (for $5 more):

The book is structured into these chapters:

  • Chapter 1, Introduction to Jet Reports, introduces Jet Reports and explains what type of reporting for which it can be used.
  • Chapter 2, Implementing Jet Reports, covers the installation of Jet Reports including the Jet Service Tier and Jet Hub.
  • Chapter 3, Configuring Jet Reports, shows how to configure Jet Reports once it has been installed.
  • Chapter 4, Introducing the Excel Add-in, introduces the Excel Add-in and the features available.
  • Chapter 5, Report Structure, shows how reports can be structured to make maintaining them easier.
  • Chapter 6, Using the functions in the Excel Add-in, shows how each of the four Jet Functions can be used.
  • Chapter 7, Creating and using an Options page, covers the creation and use of an options page in reports.
  • Chapter 8, Create a Summary Trial Balance, steps through the creation of a Summary Trial Balance report.
  • Chapter 9, Create a Detailed Trial Balance, shows how to make the Summary TB from the previous chapter into a Detailed report.
  • Chapter 10, Create a Balance Sheet, covers the creation of a formatted Balance Sheet.
  • Chapter 11, Create an Income Statement, covers the creation of an Income Statement and how to make it an intercompany/consolidated version.
  • Chapter 12, Create a Summary Payables Aged Trial Balance, shows how to create a Summary Payables Trial Balance report.
  • Chapter 13, Create a Sales Invoice by Customer Report, covers the creation of an operational report on sales invoices.
  • Chapter 14, Report Creation Tools, introduces the tools which can be used to make creating reports easier.
  • Chapter 15, Using Jet Hub, shows how users can access Jet Reports via web access and without a local install of Jet Reports.
  • Chapter 16, Report Distribution, shows how users can schedule or generate reports into Microsoft Word.

If you buy the ebook from me directly, the coupon code JetWithBCLaunch will get you 20% off the price of this book (offer available until the end of June 2023).

Urgent Resolution to a Permissions Issue With Jet Reports and Jet Analytics When Used With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Cloud Data Connector

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Centralinsightsoftware have issued an urgent notification of a permissions issue with Jet Reports and Jet Analytics when used with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central cloud data connector. An error is produced when the user tries to use either of the Jet products.

The issue is that Microsoft have made a change today to deprecate a permission on the Jet app registrations called Azure AD Graph. The previous app was published as Jet Global Data Technologies; a new one called insightsoftware has been created with the correct API permissions.

To pick up the new permissions and resolve the issue, all users need to do is log out and back in (Excel » Jet » Settings » Data Source Settings » Authentication » Log Out » Log In), accepting the permission request when prompted.

Jet Analytics users will be automatically prompted to log back in and they will not get an error, however, they will also need to accept the new permissions request.

If the users receive a message saying that admin approval is needed, the Azure Active Directory Administrator needs to provide Administrator consent for the new Jet Reports App in order for users to sign in against it.

If needed the Azure Active Directory Administrator consent is needed, this is done by logging into Business Central via Jet Reports by going to Settings » Data Source Settings » Authentication » Log in; they will get an option to consent to the application being used in the tenant.

Manually Enable Jet Reports on a Terminal Server

Jet ReportsI’ve done some work with a client recently who has been a long time user of Jet Reports; they’ve recently merged with another company and needed some of the Jet Reports amended and deployed for the new companies which were added to Dynamics GP. The infrastructure and implementation decisions used by Jet Reports were made well before my involvement and, in some cases, they go against the recommendations of the vendor.

There are two key issues which we encountered rolling Jet Reports out to the new companies. The client does not use the Jet Service Tier which allows you to roll out settings to users from a central service and they have Jet Reports available to users as a published app rather than shared desktop.

The former item means a setup of connections on each client and the latter means this is not a supported configuration ( as mentioned in this article on the Jet Reports knowledge base Jet Reports can only be supported on a shared desktop).

This is something which needs to be discussed with the client, as they should really be operating using a supported method. However, the short term issue is how to get Jet reports available to users.

Usually you’d do this by using the Enable Jet Add-in app on the Windows start menu or launching Jet using the Jet Reports app. In this case, as a published app, the end-user does not have access to the Enable Jet Add-in app and the IT department was resistant to publishing the Jet Reports app.

Instead we were able to get Jet Reports enabled in Excel by adding the add-in manually to Excel.

We did this by launching Excel from the Start menu and selecting (File » options). In the Options window select the Add-ins tab and click the GoManage Excel Add-ins:

Excel Options window

Continue reading “Manually Enable Jet Reports on a Terminal Server”

Error Logging into Jet Hub : “IDX20803: Unable to obtain configuration from: ‘System.String’.”

Jet HubI did an install of Jet Reports recently on new demo VM and found that I had a problem logging into the Jet Hub. When I tried to log in, I was always getting this error:

Error message when trying to log into Jet Hub

Error

IDX20803: Unable to obtain configuration from: 'System.String'.

I did some debugging myself and got nowhere in working out the cause of the problem as everything looked fine. An online search found an article on the
Jet Support Knowledge Base which discussed a similar error.

Stepping through the recommended troubleshooting steps I found that running IISRESET in an administrator command prompt resolved the problem. Running this command is part of the installation steps for jet Hub, so it looks like I overlooked running it during the install.

One to make sure I remember to do on the next install of Jet Repots that I do.

Error With Microsoft Dynamics GP Historical Company Name in Jet Reports

Jet ReportsI’ve worked with Jet Reports against Microsoft Dynamics GP with a few clients over the last couple of years (as well as writing a book on using it with Microsoft Dynamics GP). One recent client I was working with developed some reports against the live companies, but we had a problem when trying to include some data from historic companies (after a merger, new companies were created and the old ones marked as historic).

I was able to repeat the problem on my demo environment. When oa test company was selected the Options tab showed a #VALUE! error:

Error when selected a test company

Continue reading “Error With Microsoft Dynamics GP Historical Company Name in Jet Reports”

Recent ISC Software Webinar: Business Intelligence with Microsoft Dynamics GP

ISC Software SolutionsIn our most recent webinar, we took a look at Business Intelligence with Microsoft Dynamics GP. In this webinar, we covered how business intelligence can be used with Microsoft Dynamics GP. If you want to catch up on this, or any other, webinar, you can do so here.

  1. Introduction
  2. What is Business Intelligence?
  3. What is Jet Analytics?
  4. Reporting options with Jet Analytics
  5. What is Power BI?
  6. Reporting options with Power BI
  7. Conclusion

Introduction ^

I think this webinar was the first one in which we didn’t even open Microsoft Dynamics GP. This because this webinar focused on how business intelligence can be used with Microsoft Dynamics GP. We focused on two business intelligence products which can be used to quickly build required dashboards and reporting for business intelligence.

The two products we looked at are complimentary and can be used both together or independently. They are Jet Analytics and PowerBI

Continue reading “Recent ISC Software Webinar: Business Intelligence with Microsoft Dynamics GP”

Remember to Reactivate Jet Reports When User Made Designer

Jet ReportsI’ve been doing a lot of work with a client on Jet Reports recently. While we were doing a training session, we created some new users and changed some from being ordinary users to being designers via the Jet Licensing portal. When the first user launched Excel, they found they were still an ordinary user without access to design mode.

They logged out and back in without the license changing at all.

The key to resolving this, was for that user to reactivate Jet Reports using the Activate from Jet Service Tier option on the Jet ribbon to to pick up the changed license.

Recent ISC Software Webinar: Automation in Microsoft Dynamics GP

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”