Developer Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP

New developer tools enable businesses to customize, integrate, and extend applications

You want to be able to adapt to change as quickly and cost-effectively as possible to be competitive in your industry. It helps if you can take advantage of widely adopted technology standards and the most current and effective technological tools. At the same time, technology tools should help your developers be productive and promote business growth in a volatile environment.

Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions) business software includes the Developer Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Microsoft Great Plains) to help you increase the value of your technology investments, simplify new integrations, and reduce development costs. The three software development kits (SDKs) and runtimes in the Developer Toolkit help support far-reaching customization of your business management solution.

• Visual Studio tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP enables developers to create new application forms that look and work like Microsoft Dynamics GP forms.
• Web services for Microsoft Dynamics GP enables developers to integrate data from other sources such as Web services or legacy applications to Microsoft Dynamics GP, utilizing eConnect as the underlying data connection layer.
• eConnect helps developers integrate existing applications to Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Create consistent, customized application forms

Visual Studio tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP are add-ins to Microsoft Visual Studio tools for developers. They enable developers to use industry-standard Microsoft .NET Framework programming tools to create application forms that look just like Microsoft Dynamics GP forms. With these Visual Studio tools, developers can build extensions that enable expansion of the application without adding new capabilities—and without adding new development time and cost. Your business—or the client you might be supporting with a development project—benefits from a business management solution with custom extensions, more closely fitting the way your company works. And your development costs stay low because the developers can work in the extremely efficient, familiar .NET programming environment.

Imagine your business needs to build a new point-of-sale application to work with Microsoft Dynamics GP. Your developers use Visual Studio tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP to create the application forms. Since Microsoft Dynamics GP templates are installed in Microsoft Visual Studio, the developers' programming environment is familiar, and 4Penny can rapidly build the point-of-sale application. You can implement the new, integrated application smoothly, enhance business productivity, and augment your competitive strength. In addition, developers can add client-side extensions to the application at any point to expand it to meet your internal or external customers' future needs for vertical solutions.