GP runs fine, slow to close 2

[Whipples]

We had the problem with slowness in Great Plains. After turning off the caching everything sped back up. However, one user is having problems with closing Great Plains, it takes a long time before the window will close. Its not exactly a critical problem, but I'm wondering if any of you have seen this before and found the cause.

Thanks

 

[VictoriaYudin]

I have seen this when GP is being closed in conjunction with a lot of other apps, especially Outlook. Or does it happen when only GP is closed and nothing else?

Victoria
Flexible Solutions, Inc.

 

[Whipples]

Just went and tested it out. It happens when being closed by itself, or in conjunction of other apps. I also tried closing out all other apps first and it still takes several minutes for the window to close.

Thanks

 

[VictoriaYudin]

Do you have a 3rd party add on or customization running? On that computer do you have a large dynfib.txt file?

Victoria
Flexible Solutions, Inc.

 

[Whipples]

No 3rd party addons

I checked and the dynfib.txt file on the machine that is having problems is 100Mb. On another machine that does not have this problem the file is only 7Mb. What is this file?

 

[VictoriaYudin]

This file gets appended when GP is closed with tables still open. This is not typical for a default GP install, but we have seen this file grow like crazy with customized systems. You should be able to delete it with no problem. Don't know if it will speed up closing GP....?

Victoria
Flexible Solutions, Inc.

 

[klewis10367]

What is the file ultimately used for?

 

[Whipples]

We renamed the file to .old and that seem to have fixed the problem. Still have to give it a few days, but is looking good.

Victoria, thank you so much for help!

 

[VictoriaYudin]

Klewis, I believe that file is just used for information and logging purposes...

Glad that seems to have fixed the problem! You may need to keep deleting that file if it keeps growing...but if that's the only computer that's happening on, I guess you might want to look into why that's happening...what's diffferent on that computer?

Victoria
Flexible Solutions, Inc.

 

[KCFlog]

I also have a Great Plains installation that is painfully slow. Can anyone tell me more about how to turn off caching or any other suggestions to improve performance/response issues?

Thanks

 

[LyleU]

KC,

Assuming that you are on versions 8 or 9, there are a number of things that you can do within Great Plains to increase performance.

1) Check the setting for the auto-complete fields under user preferences. The default is to save 10,000 entries FOR EACH FIELD, forever (the zero means nothing ever gets removed until you reach the 10,000 entry mark). This will eventually bring any normal system to its knees when you open a window that has autocomplete fields. We usually suggest a more realistic number like 10 or so, and have unused entries removed weekly.

2) By default, the homepage is set to refresh every hour. Assuming that most everyone logs into GP at about the same time every day, the server will be extremely busy refreshing all of the homepages around the same time each hour. We usually recommend turning off the homepage or at least stopping the automatic refresh. By the way, Outlook on the homepage can sometimes cause issues as well.

3) When Great Plains is installed, there are jobs created in SQL Server, one per company database, called Remove Pjournals. These jobs are supposed to run every half hour and will remove temporary information about entries that are fully posted. These jobs do not run unless someone goes into SQL, finds them, changes a setting and applies the change, and then goes back into the job and resets it to its original settings and applies again. The idea is that the act of applying the changes will actually enable the jobs. In a busy location, these tables will quickly fill with thousands of entries that are not needed once entries are actually posted.

4) A well set up SQL Server maintenance plan for each of the company databases will go a long way towards making GP perform well. You can also create backups of both the database itself, as well as the log files, so that the logs do not continue to grow until you run out of disk space.

5) Although this is slowly changing, Great Plains was originally designed to farm out most of the actual processing to the workstations. Make sure that your network infrastructure is clean and efficient as a fair amount of data travels to and from each workstation continually.

It's been a while since I set up a new system from scratch so I will have to check my notes to see if there is anything else to suggest. Hope this helps and good luck.

LyleU

 

[KCFlog]

Thanks Lyle,

Actually we are still on version 7.5 - thinking about upgrading to version 9 or 10 in the near future. We had a very painful install about 2-3 years ago and have never really been happy with Great Plains generally because of poor performance. I concerned that an upgrade will only make the problems worse.

I will check what you suggest but am not sure how much applies to 7.5 - our SQL jobs to remove Pjournals does run every 30 minutes and completes successfully. I believe we have a solid SQL maintenance plan in place. We are using Citrix for our workstations with high end servers and around 10-15 users per server. All other network apps run fine it's just Great Plains that's the dog.

Thanks for your advice - it is appreciated!