Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Where are the Dynamics GP eConnect sample projects located?

By Steve Endow

I was recently asked where the Dynamics GP eConnect sample files were located.  It has been so long since I looked at them, I didn't even know where to begin to look.

I'll use GP 2010 / eConnect 2010 as the reference for the information below, and eConnect 10 and eConnect 9 should be pretty similar.

First, when you install eConnect, you will want to select the "Help and Samples" feature during the installation.  If you have already installed eConnect, you can locate the "eConnect for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010" program in Control Panel -> Programs and Features and verify that you installed Help and Samples.  It is installed by default, so you most likely have the feature already.



Next, locate the 32-bit Program Files eConnect application directory.   On my 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 machine, the directory was located at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics\eConnect 11.0\

You should have a subdirectory called "eConnect Samples":

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics\eConnect 11.0\eConnect Samples

In that directory, you should see 10 project directories with sample eConnect Visual Studio projects.



The eConnect sample projects are in Visual Studio 2005 format.  And although the code appears to have been updated to use the eConnect 2010 "CreateEntity" and "CreateTransactionEntity" methods, the eConnect References appear to be pointing to the eConnect 10 components, so you will need to update the references.

The projects also use the less than ideal method of saving the serialized eConnect XML data out to a file on the file system before reading the file back into memory to send to eConnect.

Although not the only other approach, I have a blog post on a method that is much more elegant, and that I now prefer.

Steve Endow is a Dynamics GP Certified Trainer and Dynamics GP Certified IT Professional in Los Angeles.  He is also the owner of Precipio Services, which provides Dynamics GP integrations, customizations, and automation solutions.

You can also find him on Google+ and Twitter


No comments: