I often write a lot of articles, with 2023 being very much a record year. Hopefully poeple find the articles I write useful, ad based on some comments I get they do which is very good to hear.
I’m always interested in the breakdown of areas I write about and regard some areas as my main ones; I am a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central functional consultant, so that is naturally my main area of writing; I have started working with Power Automate, mainly in relation to Business Central, and am regarding it as one of my new main areas, although I have only published a small number of posts in 2023; I develop plugins for ClassicPress to support what I do on this site, so do often write a fair bit about doing that; I was, before starting to work with Business Central, a Microsoft Dynamics GP specialist and have been dumping out my script library over last year as I thought it might be useful to those still working with that product.
I also write a few articles on a number of other subjects.
The articles I published in 2023 break down into my main four areas like this:
Merry Christmas to everyone in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and ClassicPress communities; I look forward to working with you all again next year.
I realised over the weekend that in the almost 12 years that I have been running this site, I have just surpassed 3,000 published articles. Originally the site had the tagline Ramblings of a Dynamics GP Consultant as Microsoft Dynamics GP was the main topic on which I wrote and, by a large amount, is still the topic of the vast majority of the articles.
I changed the tagline a while ago as I was also writing about a number of other topics, including ClassicPress which I regard as one of my main topics; most of those articles are either about developing for ClassicPress, or the ClassicPress plugins I have developed and released.
My third, and newest, main topic, is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central which I started working with last year, when I stopped working with Dynamics GP.
Only looking at the three main topics, this is how many articles I have written about each one:
I have no plans to stop writing for this site on any of the subjects above, or any of the others I write about, although the articles for Dynamics GP are now mainly a dump of the scripts I have written over the last 19 years so will come to an end when I have finished posting them.
I am just over half way through my working life (24 years post university and 22 years until I reach the state retirement age) and after doing some serious thinking earlier this year, I decided that it was time to reassess what I was doing now and what I wanted/needed to be doing in future.
The result, as the title says, is that I am changing jobs and will, from today onwards, be working with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and will no longer be working with Microsoft Dynamics GP.
This is a big change for me as I have been working with Dynamics GP for 19 years now, but it feels like the right time to make the change. It also means that I will no longer be the expert in the room and will need to get some serious learning done to get up to speed with Dynamics BC, which I have only lightly used so far.
Why the change? Well, as I say, I am half way through my working life and, while I still think that Dynamics GP is a great product, the future of SME ERP from Microsoft is Dynamics BC. While new features are introduced to Dynamics GP with the Fall release each year, these are now always minor functionality and I have concerns that as technology moves on that GP will get left behind. With 22 years of working life ahead of me, I don’t want to get stuck working only with older software applications.
I did consider moving outside of the Microsoft sphere, but ultimately decided that pretty much all of the software I use professionally is Microsoft. So it made sense to look for a Microsoft ERP in the SME market; Dynamics BC is that product from Microsoft which is actively maintained and integrated with new technologies and therefore provides me with the brightest future.
So having decided that I need to look at moving across to and cross-training into Dynamics BC, I decided that the best way of doing this was to move on from ISC Software. The company I am joining, as of today, is a triple Gold Microsoft Partner (Enterprise Resource Planning, Cloud Platform (Azure) and Application Development) and multiple-award winning company with 20 years experience with both Dynamics BC/NAV and in their sectors of operation. That company is 4PS UK which specialises in Dynamics BC for construction, civil engineering and related sectors.
In terms of this site, posts on Dynamics GP will pretty much stop in the coming weeks and I have already started posting about Dynamics 365 BC and have those posts syndicated to the Microsoft Dynamics Community; existing posts will continue to be available and will not be changed or redirected. I do have a small backlog of posts which I will work through over the next few weeks, so you will see some posts still appearing for a time on Dynamics GP; I am also going to go through my library of SQL scripts and see what I have which hasn’t been posted previously and which I think people may find useful.
The Microsoft Dynamics GP Table Reference site has recently been updated to the Fall 2021 Release and like the blog posts will continue to be available. I will not be taking the site down, but am unlikely to do any further updates to it as new versions are released; however, tables don’t change much in Dynamics GP any more so I’d expect the site to remain relevant for quite some time to come. As always, if you need table information for your specific version of Dynamics GP this is available in the GP Power Tools module available from, and actively maintained by, Winthrop DC.
As I leave the Dynamics GP Community, hopefully I will find a welcome and a place in the Dynamics BC community.
I leave you with a song, “Farewell”, from one of my favourite Irish folk-punk bands, The O’Reilly’s & the Paddyhats.
It turns out that Microsoft are inconsistent with where they put versions of the on premise release of Dynamics BC. I have now found the download for the 2022 Wave 1 version and have updated the BC Table Reference site to that version.
If you see any errors or omissions, or have suggestions as to how the site can be improved, please contact me with details and I’ll see about making an update.
I’ve just updated the Microsoft Dynamics GP Table Reference site to the Fall 2021 Release. Any of the new tables or columns introduced from the version it was (2018 RTM) to 2021 will now be present. If you do notice any omissions or issues, please do get in touch with details and I’ll see about a resolution.
As always, if you need version specific tables for Dynamics GP this is available in the GP Power Tools module available from Winthrop DC.
A few years ago there was a GP Table Reference website which disappeared with no warning; it had been very helpful, so I created my own version of it.
Well, we’ve recently started doing work with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and there didn’t seem to be a similar website freely available, so I have created my own. The main reason for creating the site is that it will help me understand data structures which in turn should help my understanding of data entry through the front end. As I expect to be using Jte Reports with Dynamics BC at some point, knowing how data hangs together will help me there too.
The azurecurve | Dynamics 365 BC Table Reference is, and will remain, free to use. It is currently up-to-date as of 2020 Wave 2 and will be kept up-to-date for new releases (updates may not be immediate, but will happen).
I’ve started adding table joins and will continue to do so; when a join exists, an example SQL statement will be available showing how the tables are joined.
If you see any errors or omissions, or have suggestions as to how the site can be improved, please contact me with details and I’ll see about making an update.
My first post on this site, was 10 years ago today.
I had been working with Microsoft Dynamics GP for about 8 years by that time, making a lot of use of blogs by people like David Musgrave, Mark Polino, Leslie Vail and a few others. I’d been running other websites and thought I’d give bogging a go and see if I could contribute back to the Dynamics GP community.
In 10 years, I have posted 2,476 times, of which 1,888 of them have been about Microsoft Dynamics GP and related products. I think I have fulfilled my aim of contributing back, as I have had a number of consultants and clients all tell me the blog has been very useful.
In more recent years, I have blogged about a variety of other subjects with content management systems being my next most popular subject with 201 posts, with ClassicPress being included in 176 of them.
While I will continue to post about Dynamics GP and, increasingly, ClassicPress, I do post a variety of other subjects which are usually IT related. So, after 10 years, I have decided to create a new logo and tagline which you’ll see in the header of the site starting from today.
A Happy new Year to everyone in the Microsoft Dynamics GP and ClassicPress communities and to anyone else reading this.
Following on from my Christmas music video, here is Dougie MacLean, OBE, a Scottish singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and record producer with the traditional Scottish song Auld Lang Syne:
I often write a lot of articles, with 2023 being very much a record year. Hopefully poeple find the articles I write useful, ad based on some comments I get they do which is very good to hear.
