After much waiting, the latest build 28 of GP Power Tools (GPPT) has been release today by David Musgrave.. I have been participating in the development of this new build by helping out BETA testing for this version since early spring 2020 and the more the testing went on, the more features got added, as we found a lot of new interesting functions that could benefit all Dynamics GP users and admins in their daily duty.
When I say “We”, it’s because the BETA testing team is composed of more than 15 people all around the world that are long-time GP users, developers or system admins, and have been using GPPT for many years, sometimes even back in the days when it was known as SDT (Support Debugging Tool). This is a collective effort, but all the merit goes back to the “Brain” of this wonderful tool, namely David. An old African saying states “It takes a village to raise a child” and the same is true for GPPT, it takes a community to raise the tool to new heights in every build.
The last build brings in a ton of new “features” that will please everyone that uses already GPPT and even the ones that don’t. For all the details, please visit the related blog post on the new build : https://winthropdc.wordpress.com/2020/08/11/gppt-gp-power-tools-build-28-released/
My top 5 favorites for the new build
1. Additional Launch File Installer, which offers to add GPPT to other launch files than just DYNAMICS.SET. Very handy when you have multiple launch files on shared GP setup (i.e. Citrix or TS Server) and don’t want to update to other .SET manually.
2. Resource Finder. How many times did you had to resort back to SSMS (SQL Studio Management) and scripts to locate specific data string within your database, or a specific field name from many tables ? This built-in search tool is much faster and efficient than SSMS and scripts.
3. Product Version Validation. This is like the Rockton Toolbox Version Pro tool, as it helps you track on every workstation the installed products and throw an error if there is any product mismatch. It is by no means as elaborate as Version Pro, since it doesn’t offer the same functionality like preventing users to remain logged in case of mismatch, but provides an easy way to track all the module versions in a single place.
4. The Automatic Logout has gotten new additions by forcing the close of Inquiry forms and also removing stranded records in the ACTIVITY table to free up unused licenses.
5. SQL Trigger Control: this is a brand new feature that was actually added by David after I ran into some 3rd-party ISV product issues.. which I had removed from a GP client, but the un-install had left behind several table triggers and those were causing issues in GP. It took some time to identify the culprit and we came up with the idea of building a tool into GPPT that would help sys admins quickly identify table triggers and disable or remove them. The tool even displays the code of the selected trigger in the form. It took David less than a day to develop that feature!! That shows how feedback is important from the users…
Finally, there were several bugs that got fixed in this build, namely one that was plaguing one of my customers that had just recently upgraded to the latest 18.2 version of GP and plans to use the Web Client. During the testing, we noticed that the timeout feature in GPPT would not completely logout a user session and that they would still show up in the Session Control console, not freeing up the GP license and causing much troubles to the user to reconnect back into GP. The GPPT also got much more efficient to work with the web client. As VBA is not supported in the Web Client, GPPT is the way to go thanks to the Developer module that can replace those customizations.
New is also the option to be able to silently uninstall GPPT from an elevated command line (Admin mode). The silent install was available already in the past since build 20.For a detailed change log, look at the GPPTools.txt file which is also installed with GP Power Tools in the Microsoft Dynamics GP application folder. Don’t forget to read the updated documentation in PDF format which has been increased from 425 pages to 592 pages !!
Hope you enjoyed reading this and until next post, wish you a happy life.
@GP_Beat
The Dynamics GP Geek Blog 
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