Tag: extender

Using a GP Web Service Extension in the Connector for Microsoft Dynamics GP

The Connector for Microsoft Dynamics provides a powerful integration platform that can be customized and extended with the CRM Connector SDK and Web Services for Microsoft Dynamics GP SDK tool sets.  The CRM Connector for Microsoft Dynamics GP  page in PartnerSource has various downloads to get you started with the CRM Connector including the SDK download.   You can find the GP Web Services SDK download  here .  Additionally, the Dynamics GP Web Services SDK page on MSDN contains the same reference information found in the download page and is available to those without accessing PartnerSource or CustomerSource and can be helpful for quick access.   One of the most powerful features of the CRM Connector is that you can customize the existing maps using out of the box functions or write your own functions using the guidance of the Connector SDK and Visual Studio.  In addition to writing new functions to extend maps, you can write your own Adapters to integrate from non-ERP systems like a folder on the file system holding XML or Excel files.   So you can leverage all of the powerful features of the Connector like retry logic, email notifications, and event logging in your own integration.   You can setup your integration to run when you want using the Connector client UI.  It’s a very impressive set of features that you get for free when using the Connector as your integration platform. The Map Limitation We had a recent support incident where the customer was using the CRM Connector to integrate Accounts from Microsoft CRM to Dynamics GP using the default Account to Customers map.    One of the requirements was to bring over the email address for the customer record.  Since the version of Dynamics GP was 10.0 in this case, we are dependant on the GP Web Services object model.  In version 10.0, the email address for a customer is a property of the InternetAddresses type which is a read-only type.  This read-only limitation with this specific property is not the case for Dynamics GP 2010 Web Services.   However, the concept here can be applied to limitations that can be found in Dynamics GP Web Services 2010.   Since GP Web Services has a limitation here, then the perception is that the Account to Customer map has a limitation.  So we need to overcome the limitation with the Account to Customer map not being able to integrate a Customer internet address, specifically an email address. Since the InternetAddresses type is read only in version 10.0, one method to integrate this data would be to write an Extension for GP Web Services using the guidance we provide in the GP Web Services SDK.  Then expose this custom Extension in a custom CRM Connector function that the Account to Customer map will use

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