Tag: 2016

Save a Tree: Tools to Go Paperless

It is almost that time of year again for KTL Solutions to host its annual Mid-Atlantic Technology User Conference, “Empower the User”. This will be our eleventh annual user conference and it will be held on May 19, 2016, at the Microsoft Center in Reston, Virginia. In past user conferences, we have found many users have benefited greatly from the topics presented and have been able to immediately apply some of the information obtained when they returned to their offices.

April 26, 2016

CRM 2016 SMS Marketing

What can the new SMS (Short Message Service) Marketing feature in CRM 2016 do for your company? The new SMS feature allows your marketing department/marketing staff to become truly mobile. It allows your marketing department to step into the modern era. Marketers within your company can now create powerful SMS marketing campaigns. They will be able to integrate this feature into the already existing multichannel campaigns running within your establishment. Dynamics CRM 2016’s new SMS feature will support both outbound and inbound SMS marketing in select markets.

February 3, 2016

Five Things to Watch for in 2016 for Project Managers

1. Risk Management Will Become A Buzzword Of 2016

With the increase in globalization in the project management industry, we are seeing projects impacted by the likes of industrialization, weather, and even terrorism on our day-to-day lives. With the growth of Agile, project managers can begin to leverage risk analysis and become more proactive in their responses. There are many tools to choose from in the market place, but the skilled professional will constantly sharpen their skills in order to prevent or leverage risk.

January 25, 2016

Upcoming Updates to SQL in 2016

Coming in 2016, the newest upgrades and features to SQL have developers everywhere speculating about the future. Microsoft has designed the 2016 release of SQL to be easy to use, traditional in application appearance and control, and most importantly data-secure. The most exciting new feature for SQL in 2016 is called Always Encrypted. Microsoft has created an extra layer of data security so that even when you are working with sensitive data such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, the data is secure. This ensures that even at the most vulnerable time for an attack, while data is being used, a person’s identity and company’s reputation are safe. The best part about this upgrade and its new features is that it will not hinder the performance of the application.

August 24, 2015

Power BI & Dynamics CRM Online 2015

The Power BI preview released by Microsoft in Convergence provided a great tool to quickly make sense of large amounts of data. Power BI does all the heavy lifting and provides a quick and easy way to interact with the data. As promised by Microsoft with the release of Dynamics CRM Online 2015 Update 1 CRM is now available within PowerBI alongside SalesForce & Google Analytics to gather data and provide data analysis. As of publishing this article the Power BI Dynamics CRM connector will only work with Dynamics CRM Online, it will not work with an on premise CRM installation, hopefully the on premise connectivity is not too far.

May 26, 2015

Marriage Counseling between Sales and Marketing

I was extremely fortunate to have KTL send me down to Atlanta, Georgia for one of Microsoft’s largest conferences, Convergence. Here I was able to really understand concepts involving both marketing and sales that pertained to us as partners using the solutions we not only implement and sell, but use in house as well. My knowledge grew with many of the sessions provided, but one stood out from others. Not because it was more technical or that I learned something specific that I have been wanting to learn more about; it was that this particular session put a retrospect on what KTL’s Director of Sales and I deal with on an everyday basis: the connection and dependence between our two departments.

April 8, 2015

The Cost of Upgrading vs. The Cost of Fixing Problems

Upgrading an accounting system can be a daunting task for some. I often here from clients that they feel as though they have just implemented a system and now there is a new version to upgrade to. Unfortunately, this is sometimes the case. Dynamics, for instance, now does 6 month cycle releases for their new versions. Meaning there will be a GP2015, GP2015 R2 and then GP2016. So what is the point in trying to keep up? Is there really that much value in upgrading?

March 30, 2015

Upgrading why should I do it? What are some benefits from upgrading?

Each year there is a new version of your ERP software and the big question is should this be the year that we upgrade. Many may see upgrading as a large project that will take time and resources but what you don’t see are all the benefits you will have from upgrading. These benefits are not always limited to the ERP enhancements with an upgraded software. A lot can happen in the year or two that it has been since your last upgrade. Businesses are constantly changing and the need for more automation and functionality out of your software is always there.

March 24, 2015

Why are my GL Cash Account Balance & Checkbook Balance Different?

In this blog, I wanted to address the variety of factors that may lead to your Checkbook balance and General Ledger Balance differing. Some vital information that should be collected to evaluate why the balances are different are:

What is the difference between the General Ledger Cash Account and the Checkbook balance?
When did the balances between the General Ledger and the Checkbook last match?
Are there any un-posted General Ledger batches?
Are there any Cash Receipts not deposited?
What are the results from the Reconcile to GL function in GP: Microsoft Dynamics GP – Tools – Routines – Financial – Reconcile to GL

February 27, 2015

Where do Value Based Enable Rules get their data for the CRM 2013 ribbon?

A recent request tasked me with adding functionality to the form ribbon of an Order in CRM 2013. The goal was to capture information from two fields on the Order’s associated Account and based on that information enable or disable a button on the ribbon of the Order which for the purposes of this article we can call Has_Value. I was not able to pass the values to the Order when it was created as these values could change some time after it had been created. Additionally, if the associated Account were found to be a duplicate, it would have to be merged and updated on the Order that could also change the results of the information I was capturing. This left me with having to query for my information using Javascript when the Order form loaded. With this Javascript query, I then updated a hidden Boolean field on the Order if the criteria was met or left it blank if it was not. This might not seem important now but having to take these actions in order to meet the requirements affected how this customization had to be modified at later steps in the functionality.

February 18, 2015