Microsoft Convergence 2012 Houston - Day 2
Tuesday 20th March 2012 .... The second and middle day of the Convergence conference.
I think everyone was slowing down this morning as there were a lot of people having breakfast at the hotel and by the time we (Jennifer, Mariano, Frank Hamelly and myself) had eaten it was already a bit late for first session of the day.
Mariano and I had our second "Advanced" Support Debugging Tool in the second timeslot of the day and had a great turnout (some 270 plus attendees) at our CSGP23-R1 Microsoft Dynamics GP: Advanced Administration with the Support Debugging Tool presentation. Mark Polino came and visited with a surprise for the attendees.
Mariano, Mark Polino and David
Mark had brought along his slingshot with some freebie goodies to launch into the audience. Thanks Mark for setting the scene and waking the audience up.
Firing a GPUG T-shirt into the audience
After we had launched the stash of goodies we had, Mark joined the audience and Mariano and I presented our session. This was an advanced session that included many of the areas of the Support Debugging Tool that we just don't have the time to cover in the introductory session. While this session does have a number of demos which use Transact-SQL and Dexterity code, the main aim was to show some of the possibilities that can be achieved with the tool.
David and Mariano presenting
After lunch, Mariano and I attended Leslie Vail MVP and John Lowther's session CSGP20-R1 The New Microsoft Dynamics GP Administrator. Over the years Leslie has been instrumental in making our Support Debugging Tool sessions great. Her feedback has improved the tool itself and streamlined our presentations. Now it was our turn to support her and John as they presented their session.
John Lowther and Leslie Vail ... the caped crusaders.... well maybe
The next stop was the interactive discussion on security IDGP02-R1 Ask the Experts: Security in Microsoft Dynamics GP. This session run by Bob McAdam, Beat Bucher, Jeff McDowell and Steve Baute with Brian Roney as Subject Matter Expert (SME) was a great open forum to discuss application security and related issues. Mariano and I joined the session as application security usually involves a discussion of the Support Debugging Tool's Security Profiler and Security Information windows. Bob was kind enough to promote the repeats of our sessions on the next day.
With the sessions over for the day it was time to find Jennifer and head up to Pam Misialek's room at the hotel for a "Thank You Open House" for the Microsoft Dynamics GP presenters. Of course the usual crowd was there.
Usual Suspects: John Lowther, David Musgrave, Leslie Vail, Mariano Gomez and Beat Bucher
During the evening, we got to talking technical stuff (as you do when you have a room full of geeks), so then Jennifer and Pam decided to have a private non-technical chat.... I don't think I want to know what they were talking about, but I am worried now that Pam knows things about me that she should not really know.
Jennifer and Pam discussing something important
Later the technical stuff made way for jokes and we managed to get John laughing so much that he started having trouble breathing and ended up having tears down his face and had to go to the other room to calm down. The "Giggle Loop" strikes again.
John caught in the "Giggle Loop"
We finished the night with a pleasant dinner down at McCormick and Schmik's in the Houston Pavillions. While some of our group went into the Spot's party, the rest walked back to the hotel.
Once back at the hotel we ended up having a discussion (joined by Kim Peterson, Mark Polino and Ian Stewart) about how to track usage of the Support Debugging Tool. This information is important as it will help justify the continued development of the Support Debugging Tool to management.
Action Item: Just as a quick measure, if you use the Support Debugging Tool and want to see it continue, post a comment on this blog article and tell us of your experiences. What parts do you use? How much time has it saved you? [Edit] Note: There are no plans to stop work on the SDT, but I do need to be able to justify the time I put into development, documentation and testing.
One more day to go.
David
Comments
Anonymous
March 28, 2012
One of several things the Suport Debugging Tool is used where I work for frequently is to find table and column info. It is a far better tool that working through the GP app in the resource info. Saves me a ton of time which I never have enough of.Anonymous
March 28, 2012
Please, oh please, oh please let the Support Debugging Tool continued to be developed. Without it, we would still have a problem with named printers switching of their own accord when a workstation gets locked. Not only that, but we have continued to find more and more ways which the Support Debugging Tool can serve us better. While at Convergence, I caught onto the idea of letting the Support Debugging Tool send not only screenshots to our helpdesk showing what the error may be, but also telling them what was going on at the time as our users are not always so forthright when asked what was taking place at the time of an error.Anonymous
March 28, 2012
The comment has been removedAnonymous
March 29, 2012
The best thing that I use in SDT is to write triggers without having to have a separate chunk. There are couple of admin tools such as profiling, logging, etc. which makes my life way way easier than having to enable ScriptDebugger flag.Anonymous
March 29, 2012
I have started installing SDT at all of my clients when I am performing the initial install or an upgrade. We typically are using it for logging, security profiling, dex.ini modifications. I have not delved into some of the advanced tools, but like that they are available. The addition of SQL profiling has helped us track down issues as well. PPAnonymous
March 29, 2012
Posting by Mark Polino from DynamicAccounting.net msdynamicsgp.blogspot.com.au/.../support-debugging-tool-help.htmlAnonymous
March 29, 2012
I would never do an implementation without installing SDT. It makes life so much easier around security errors. Many of our clients have come from earlier versions of Microsoft Dynamics GP and are not used to the muliple windows concept when they first upgrade. Being able to change the colours of companies and tag the windows with the user name and company ID makes this much easier to identify which company they are working on if they have multiple sessions open at one time. Also, enabling users to run SQL scripts is a truly awesome feature. This product has so much in it, it really pays off to take the time to read the manual, it makes no sense not to use it.Anonymous
April 16, 2012
Posting by Vaidy Mohan from Dynamics GP - Learn & Discuss vaidymohan.com/.../what-features-do-you-use-in-support-debugging-tool-sdt