Monday, December 31, 2012

Mark's Musings: New Year's Resolutions

Written By Mark Rockwell,
President of Rockton Software

My most lasting resolution, which I made so long ago, is to never make New Year’s Resolutions. There is something about a calendar prompting people to suddenly change that I find strange.  Almost nowhere in life do people make changes based on time; rather, they make it when new information presents itself.  For instance, if my car breaks down today, I get it into the shop right away.  I don’t know why I’d wait until next January to fix it.  If someone finds a new friend or romance, do they put off growing that relationship until the calendar turns a page?

Most New Year’s Resolutions are in the form of making ourselves better people: working out, eating right, stopping smoking, or improving a skill.  But if you’re aware that you want to change something, because the awareness occurred sometime recently, why would you put it off?  Why not start now?  The rest of life’s choices for change present themselves all the time; they never care where an arbitrary date in time lands.

I’m a huge fan of making change at the time change needs to happen.  And some of those battles—like being less judgmental, being honest and caring, and sharing the good life—are resolutions I make almost daily.  Resolutions need not be an infinite commitment, but rather a conscious choice to move in a new direction, falling forward when we stumble rather than downward.  Real change takes time, practice, patience, and learning.  Regardless of what day it is, what do you want to change today?

Follow Rockton Software on Twitter to keep updated with us this New Year!

Thursday, December 27, 2012

The 2012 Rockton Review

Written By Kelli Sexton,
CEO of Rockton Software
You might not know it from the outside, but we have made significant changes this past year at Rockton Software. I thought perhaps some of our changes might be beneficial for your organization to see, so here are the major changes.

Agile Development – This is by far the biggest paradigm shift we have had as an organization. As you may already know, Rockton has committed to a substantial software solution built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Rockton Connect. We attempted to spec out the design using our usual development practice of Waterfall. Unfortunately, we kept running into delays, roadblocks, and learning spikes. We knew we needed to tackle the project in a different way, so that is when we embraced the Agile methodology. Agile met an organic need of better procession of tasks and as a result has been embraced by everyone because it was not a top-down decision of direction, but an answer to a true need.

Kanban Boards – Out of the Agile methodology, we were introduced to Kanban boards. Of course, we all had a typical list of things to do, but there is something significantly beneficial about being able to track your entire backlog in one single place, and methodically move them along the path from Backlog to In Progress to Completed. A sense of empowerment has overtaken the entire staff in this transition. The Kanban boards are the perfect compliment from our busy non-development team.

More Meetings – As crazy as it sounds, we are actually benefiting from more meetings. Our biggest bang-for-buck meetings are the daily Scrum and twice-weekly Stand Up meetings. These come directly from the Agile process. The meetings are intended to be short (less than 15 minutes) where each person reports what they worked on during the time from our last meeting to this one, what they are committed to work on between now and the next Scrum/Stand Up, and any Roadblocks they have encountered. Our development staff has these meetings daily and our non-development staff has them twice a week.  Making commitments to the entire team is very powerful and uncovering roadblocks as they happen rather than weeks down the road has greatly increased our efficiency.

SharePoint – We started working with SharePoint about 18 months ago but opted for a slow adoption. This past year, we really started leveraging the power of SharePoint. With different departments handling different business needs, being able to track all related information for each department has really helped us leverage our knowledge base.

Through our adoption of these processes, we are communicating more effectively, tackling our highest priorities routinely, and our overall job satisfaction has risen dramatically. It is my hope that you may find our success beneficial to you and your organization.  We are fired up and excited to see what 2013 has to offer us, here at Rockton!


To keep updated on Rockton Software in 2013, follow us on Twitter!

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Benefits of Working from Home

Written By Pam Rasmussen,
Technical Support at Rockton Software

After working in the corporate world for more than three decades, I was given the opportunity to work from home when I took a new job, Technical Support at Rockton Software (www.rocktonsoftware.com). It was always a goal of mine to be able to work from home full-time. When it finally happened, I was thrilled to say the least. After working this way for some time now, it would be difficult for me to go back to the old way.

Working from home has so many advantages for both you and your employer. Here’s a list of the benefits I have noticed:

More Productivity
Less Interruptions
No Commute
Lower Car Insurance
Lower Vehicle Maintenance
Less Gas Expense
Less Stress
Less Cost for Work Clothes, Lunches Out, Etc.
More Flexible Hours

In addition, your employer doesn't have the expense of providing you with a physical office: furniture, heat, coffee, janitorial services, etc. When I think about having to drive to work, I get the chills. I love working from home, and if you ever get the chance to do it—take it!

Rockton Software has employees working in seven different states, so we could not have the perfect team unless nearly all of us worked from home.

Learn about the Disciplines of Working from Home! And, don't forget to follow Rockton Software on Twitter!

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

A Dynamics GP ISV Developer Shares his Tool Tips for the Office

Written By Bryan Page, .NET
Developer at Rockton Software
In today’s age of information overload, having the right tools around the office becomes almost essential in your day-to-day routine.  The more time you spend at your computer, the more you begin to appreciate the little tools, which can make your life easier while working. Over time, I have collected a small arsenal in my toolbox that I take to work each day at Rockton (www.rocktonsoftware.com). Most of these are so near and dear to me that I don’t know what I could do without them at this point . . .

What is in my toolbox?

Input Director
At my desk, I run my laptop and my server each with 2 monitors, jumping between them all used to be a pain.  I would either have to run 2 sets of Keyboard/Mice to jump between the two, or install a physical KVM switch to move between the monitors on each machine, which was always a clunky solution.  Now thanks to the help of Input Director, I can move between the 2 different environments just as simply as moving the mouse to where I need it to be.  It allows the clipboard to move between machines and also allows locking & unlocking all machines at the same time.   There are several other similar items out on the market, but I found this to have the easiest setup and also the most reliable from the ones that I have tested.

RDCMan
If you have to manage multiple remote servers at any time, this tool is really hard to beat.  It allows you store, group, and organize all of the connection information for each of the servers that you would connect to.  You can also provide a friendly name, so that you can easily relate to the server if you don’t like to remember IP addresses.

One Note 
I haven’t really been considering Microsoft Office products as part of my toolbox items, as they are part of business machine standards. But I feel that OneNote deserves a special shout out because it is completely overlooked by most.  This is really a do everything tool.  It allows you to drop notes anyplace in the file page you want, move them, add URL links, links to files, or include the whole file itself and copy in pictures like you would do with a regular notebook, but this is portable and searchable.  You can save files up to a Sky Drive or cloud account and then synchronize them with your devices . . . and yes, there is a OneNote app for iPhone/iPad  and Android devices, so you can truly take it anywhere and share notebooks with anyone you trust.

One of my favorite features is the screen clipping tool that is included.  On Windows machines, if you press the “Windows+S” key, it will gray out the screen and will allow you to highlight the area of the screen that you want to capture, and it will copy an image of just the selected area, automatically. Ultimately, saving a copy in OneNote and placing it on the clipboard if you choose to set it up to do so.  I use this feature at least 2-3 times a day since it is so simple to use.

Norton Ghost
Ghost allows you to create a snapshot in time image of your hard drive to a backup device.  Not just the operating system, but all of your personal files, settings, and installed programs.  The worst feeling in the world is turning on your computer and not having it boot up to the desktop that you stare at each and every day.  With Ghost, you can replace the computer or hard drive, or whatever is failing and bring you back to a full working condition in about an hour or two.  With how fast things change these days, we can’t afford to be down for an entire day or more while trying to get back to a working state. This is a great tool to relieve a lot of the concern for machine failure, thus, let you focus on getting your job done.  Now, we hope that they have the update to Ghost for Windows 8 coming soon.

Bitlocker To Go
For those that travel and carry portable drives with them, this offers a secure way to protect those devices, or more appropriately the data that is on it.  With machines that have Windows 7 or later software, Microsoft provided an easy way to protect and encrypt your machines hard drive, but also portable devices in case they are ever lost or stolen.  Once enabled, the drive will recognized paired machines so there is not a noticeable difference to the user, but if you try to use it on different machine, you will be required to enter a password, and if it senses unauthorized use attempts, will lock down to a point where it can only be unlocked by an encryption key, which was created when you initially enabled the protection.  This is a great way to make sure your portable data is safe.

Notepad ++ 
This isn’t anything fancy, but there are quite a few times where you get a large text file, and you need to find a specific line, or need to look at an XML or HTML file. Windows built in notepad editor just doesn’t have the power it needs to handle those files properly.  This is a lightweight text editor that also has support for many of the coding languages, which gives you inline color representation of different coding tags as well as the ability to expand and collapse sections if applicable.

Pandora
This is one of the many streaming music service that allows you to tailor the music to suit your taste.  I’d go stir crazy in my office without having some background noise, so this is great for me.  I don’t have to browse through the endless songs in my collection to put together playlists, I just give it a song and it finds similar tunes. I either like it or not, then Pandora refines itself to what I have told it. After a few months of active voting, I don’t have to hardly touch it anymore; it just plays good music all the time.  Not to mention the price is right, free!

I hope that you can find something in my toolbox that may make your job just a little easier.

Additionally, I am always up for a hot tip on a different tool that I am missing out on, or if you have something better than what I am using, let me hear it in the comments below because I am constantly looking for tools that would help make my day Simpler and Easier.

Follow Rockton Software for more tips!

Thursday, December 13, 2012

GP Optimizer Summer 2012: Making the Most Out of Microsoft Dynamics GP Payroll

Written By Integrity Data for GP Optimizer
Summer 2012 Edition by Rockton Software

Paying your employees is a little more complicated than just tracking their hours and cutting a check. There are a lot of different components involved that require close attention to detail. For example, if your employee signs up for direct deposit, you need to ensure they receive notification of payment. Or if employees participate in an investment plan, you need to closely track and report on those amounts. Microsoft Dynamics® GP Payroll helps streamline these processes to make sure your employees get paid the right amount and at the right time. The functionality of Microsoft Dynamics GP Payroll right out of the box works perfectly for most organizations. But in some cases, payroll gets even more complicated, and you start struggling with gaps in GP Payroll.

Here are some examples:

  • Somebody entered their time incorrectly – they entered 40 hours worked but they actually worked 35. Or somebody planned vacation time but didn't let you know that they actually worked that day, so they come to you and say “My paycheck isn't right. I didn't take any vacation last week! You need to back those hours out!” What is your process for making these corrections? To make a data entry correction in Microsoft Dynamics GP Payroll takes about 10-15 steps. If you only have a few employees, that is not a big deal but if you have many employees, this can be an incredibly time-consuming process.
  • Most companies offer a regular 401k investment plan. Microsoft Dynamics GP Payroll covers this type of plan right out of the box. But what if you offer more than just one. For example, some companies offer a regular 401k plan and a Roth 401k Plan, as well as a catch up plan for employees over 50 years old. 
  • Direct deposit in Microsoft Dynamics GP Payroll is a great benefit for employees. Instead of waiting for the physical check, your employees can be at ease knowing their bank account will be replenished on pay day. But wouldn't it be great if you could also streamline communications with direct deposit employees even more by automatically emailing pay-stubs as an encrypted PDF instead of snail mailing all of them out?
  • Sooner or later, one or many of your employees will need to change dependents or deductions on their W4. In order for you to calculate how much a check would be with these changes, GP Payroll has you run a mock payroll every time and then you have to remember to change everything back before you run actual payroll. Time consuming and not immune to risk…
  • Microsoft Dynamics GP Payroll out of the box accrues and tracks both vacation and sick time (two buckets). This is enough for most organizations, but some companies want to track vacation time, sick time, personal time, FMLA, maternity leave, etc. 

Again, the functionality of Microsoft Dynamics GP Payroll right out of the box works perfectly for most organizations. But as you can see, in some cases, payroll gets even more complicated, and you start struggling with gaps in GP Payroll. If you are facing these challenges, think about adding Integrity Data GP Payroll enhancements that easily fix these gaps and increase the flexibility that’s sometimes needed in your organization. They seamlessly work with Microsoft Dynamics GP to help you save time, meet the needs of your employees and run a successful business. Their products are extremely easy to install and implement. In fact, it only takes as little as 15 minutes to install some products. This fast turnaround time is a huge perk for clients and gets them up and running fast.

To learn more about Integrity Data and the extensions they provide for Microsoft Dynamics GP, please visit www.gphrp.com or call 888-786-6162.


Download GP Optimizer Summer 2012 Edition by Rockton Software for more great content on how to make Microsoft Dynamics GP work simpler and easier, click on the GP Optimizer Picture at the bottom, right corner of Rockton Software's Homepage.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

SmartFill Object Advanced Settings

Written By Jim Peliksza, Developer at Rockton Software.

There are some circumstances where you may want to alter the SmartFill’s default behavior.  For this reason, we have exposed a few advanced, object-level settings that may be of use to you.


In older builds of SmartFill by Rockton Software, these settings were visible on the SmartFill Object Maintenance Details window, which you see when you open an object definition from the SmartFill Objects window.  To make room for the new Preview area, and to reduce general clutter and improve usability, these settings were moved to a separate window.  You can access this window by clicking the Advanced button, as shown below:


 We will now describe each setting and when you would use them.

Open Lookup on Exactly One Match 
Selecting this checkbox will cause SmartFill’s lookup window (titled, “Make a Selection”) to open even if only one match was found.

Here’s an example of when you would want to use this option: let’s say you enter “blue” as a search, hoping to find a blue phone.  However, as it turns out, the only blue item in the system is a blue widget.  SmartFill’s default behavior will be to automatically select the blue widget because that was the one and only match.

Unfortunately, this is not what we want.  Since no blue phones were displayed in the results list, it means that we probably need to select a different color phone, not a blue widget. On many windows it may not be simple to “undo” the selection of the blue widget and look for another phone because the ID field will now be locked.

If you find situations where this happens a lot with a given object, you may want to use the Open Lookup on Exactly One Match setting so that the SmartFill lookup window will open instead.  This will give you the option of cancelling the lookup window, and allow you to enter a new search value that will get you a list of items that better match what you were initially looking for.

Prompt to Add on Zero Matches
By default, when SmartFill by Rockton Software (www.rocktonsoftware.com) attempts to do a lookup, if it does not find any matches it will do whatever the original window would have done if SmartFill was not installed.  In most cases, when you type in an ID value that does not exist, GP will either just give you an error message, or it will prompt you to enter a new record with that ID.

However, on some windows this is not the case.  An example that comes to mind is the Sales Transaction Entry window.  On this window, if you enter an Item Number that does not exist, it is treated as a non-inventory item number.  Since you don’t get any message that this has happened, you may end up accidentally using a non-inventory Item Number on a transaction when you really were just searching for an inventory item.

Selecting this checkbox will give you two options when no results are found: 1) use the default GP behavior, or 2) cancel the lookup so that you can make changes to the value you originally entered.  This solves the problem above because you will now always know when a search value that you typed returns no results.

Search With Each Token
We will define a “Token” as an individual word separated by a space in the search value.  For instance, if you typed “blue widget” into an ID field, then “blue” and “widget” are each considered “tokens.”

Normally, if the Search With Each Token box is not checked, and you typed “blue widget” as a search value, SmartFill would search for matches of “blue widget”.  Only results where these exact eleven characters are found will be displayed.

However, if this box is checked, then the two tokens are treated individually when determining whether or not to include a record in the results list.  If you select AND for Compare Type, SmartFill will display all records that contain “blue” and “widget”.  For instance, if a record contains “widget container, blue”, then this would be considered a match if Search With Each Token is marked.  If it is not marked, then this would not be considered a match.

If you choose OR for Compare Type, SmartFill will search for matches of either “blue” or “widget”.  For example, “blue carton” and “green widget” would both be matches.

Learn more about SmartFill by Rockton Software by watching a YouTube Demo!

Thursday, December 6, 2012

What If Microsoft Dynamics GP Customers had an Elf on the Shelf?

Written By Jenn Schoemer,
Project Manager at Rockton Software.
I consider myself a pretty practical person and don’t normally buy into the latest gadget or this year’s hottest toy.  I would call myself more of a mid to late adopter, which is one of many reasons why I love working with so many trailblazers at Rockton Software (www.rocktonsoftware.com), but that is another subject for an entirely different blog.

I recall a few years ago hearing all this hype about Elf on the Shelf, but when I saw how much they cost, I didn't think it was worth it.  After all, I could just use the ol’ “Santa is watching you” line.  Well, I finally broke down and bought one and, let me tell you, I would have paid double for it to get the results I’m getting. It’s crazy to think how far a little magic can go.

Which got me thinking . . . what if Microsoft Dynamics GP customers had an Elf on the Shelf, what would it be seeing and hearing?  Since we are nearing Year End, and GP payroll is near and dear to my heart, I envision heads in hands, people putting in extra hours trying to figure out errors in W2s and 1099s, high stress levels (you know the image of the person banging their head against the computer screen), or a famous clip out of “Office Space.”

So if you are looking for a few last-minute gift ideas, and ones to help avoid a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency, here is a good start.

SmartFill:  Who wouldn't want some extra time in their day?  Or to be able to work faster or more efficient. And most customers deal with large data sets in at least one area: customers, vendors, accounts, items, etc.

SmartFill allows you to type part of the name, description, or whatever you know into any ID field, and then intuitively discovers the correct ID and types it in for you. No look-up required!  In the end SmartFill will end up saving your customers $1 per user per day.  A no-brainer! Add it to the list!

Auditor:  I’m sure those elves would hear plenty wishes from customers trying to understand the who, what, when, where, how, and why around data changes in their system.

Another time-saver!  Just think of all the time the customer will save not having to manually dig through records trying to understand what, why, and when a record changed.  We have also heard the time customers spend with their auditors was dramatically reduced, in some cases by days.

Sounds like another one to add to the list!

Dynamics GP Toolbox: And . . . what about those IT folks?  Here is another group of people who could use some fun new toys.  Our Dynamics GP Toolbox offers over 20 different tools to improve user experience and business process. But the IT folks will LOVE the security and IT administration tools.

I’m sure those elves would hear needs for Security Manager, Inactivity Timeout, System Maintenance lockout, Mentor, and Inspector to name a few.  After all, what IT person do you know wants to spend countless hours trying to insure everyone is out of the system, so they can install the latest update?  Who can mull over pages and pages of security reports just to understand which windows and reports a specific user has access to?  And you know at the top of their list is spending hours trying to figure out which tables they should be using for that “Must-have, needed-it-yesterday report.” Those are just a few of the headaches you could relieve this Holiday Season by adding Dynamics GP Toolbox to their list.

Dynamics Report Manager (DRM): Oh, the reports, reports, reports!  Whose Santa’s list wouldn't be complete without a gift that would empower them to get any information, from any device at any time? DRM is a nice little package which can add automation and organization to their customer reports.

Omni Price:  Omni Price is just what those elves will be suggesting for those customers who are poring over Excel spreadsheet after spreadsheet of customer prices. They know these customers have visions of an easier way to create, manage, and update complex customer price sheets. Visions of how they could apply pricing contracts to a specific customer or to groups of customers; or applying a contract to groups of items using advanced item filters; or entering individual items directly into the pricing matrix; or using date filters to apply pricing for specific intervals or days of the week. Now you know Omni Price would make their Santa list.

What would a little Elf magic do for your customer this year?


Don't Forget to Read "Dear Microsoft Dynamics GP Santa . . ." featured on the ERP Software Blog!

Monday, December 3, 2012

GP Optimizer Summer 2012 Edition: U.S. Fund for UNICEF Relies On the Microsoft Dynamics GP User Group (GPUG)

Written By GPUG for GP Optimizer Summer
2012 Edition by Rockton Software
When your organization’s mission is something as important as “building a world where the rights of every child are realized,” you don’t have room for inefficiencies in your processes. No organization understands this better than UNICEF, and that’s why they rely on the Microsoft Dynamics GP User Group (GPUG®) to help maximize the effectiveness of their Microsoft® Dynamics GP solution.

UNICEF is a 180-staff organization serving children in 190 countries around the globe. The organization utilizes Microsoft Dynamics GP for grant management—a critical part of their operations, as they are a non-profit organization funded solely by grants and voluntary contributions. Eugene Kogan, UNICEF Director of IT and Database and Application Developer, turned to the expertise of GPUG as a go-to resource for ideas, strategies, and answers from others who are using Microsoft Dynamics GP to accomplish similar objectives.

Since joining GPUG, Eugene has found immense value in the networking and learning opportunities that the group provides. “It’s a great investment and a network I can leverage that helps me nearly every single day.”

Eugene notes that he has realized particular benefits from attending a number of educational webinars and GPUG Summit, the user group’s annual conference. Of Summit, Eugene says “It’s an event dedicated solely to Microsoft Dynamics GP and you have access to a wealth of expert resources. It gives us great opportunities to collaborate with fellow users and tackle our most important issues together.”

Eugene has also found many other ways to participate in GPUG and has become an invaluable participant and contributor. He leads his local GPUG Regional Chapter, actively participates in Special Interest Groups (SIGs), and is a member of the GPUG Board of Advisors.

About the U.S. Fund for UNICEF
For the past 60 years, UNICEF has provided health care, clean water, nutrition, education, and emergency relief to children in over 190 countries.  The U.S. Fund for UNICEF is a nonprofit organization headquartered in New York, NY.

About GPUG:
The Microsoft Dynamics GP User Group (GPUG) is an association of companies sharing the common interest of optimizing their usage of Microsoft Dynamics GP. This independent community of users collaborates through a myriad of conferences, virtual events, local meetings, and programs to exchange knowledge and best practices.

To learn more, please visit www.GPUG.com or email us at info@GPUG.com.

Download GP Optimizer Summer 2012 Edition by Rockton Software for more great content on how to make Microsoft Dynamics GP work simpler and easier, simply click on the GP Optimizer Picture at the bottom, right corner of Rockton Software's Homepage.