Users with two instances of Gp running

[barbola]

I need a really good explanation for our users as to why it is DANGEROUS to have two different companies open on their workstation at the same time. They are using the same launch file, same Dynamics.exe but two databses open.

The obvious "because data corruption can occur" doesn't seem to sink in to this person.

Does anyone have any other really good reasons?

Thanks.

 

[jazgeek]

actually, other than a shared reports dictionary being opened for writing in report writer, I can't think of any reason why you couldn't have 2 instances open in 2 different companies. We frequently do this as we are continually making inter company transfers at the gl, sales and inventory levels.

of course the machine is slow as hell due to the enormous amounts of processing and ram required to even launch the program properly.



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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[barbola]

Well, I will let him get away with it this time. We are sometimes max'ed out with the number of users, and I'm sure he watches that carefully.

I have run into issues where I was working in one company, and switched companies and the Gl accounts for the first company show up in all the lookup lists. SO I have to File > Exit and then go back in.

 

[jazgeek]

wow.. I've never seen that before.


I have done something like this for clients in the distant past (ie version 6 and below) where I created two dynamic.set files pulling reports dictionaries and launch dictionaries from different locations. Then put them as shortcuts with different names on the users desktop.



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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[barbola]

Yes we have that as well, two separate launch files. This is because one of our 3rd party products has a limited number of licenses so users have the option of using it or not. They are not supposed to use it if they don't need it, but sometimes need it.

 

[jazgeek]

would be really nice if Micro$oft offered a site license instead of concurrent.

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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[winthropdc]

From my experience, there is no technical downside to running multiple instances of a single installed application.

The problem is that your users are then using up multiple concurrent licenses. You can get a site license from Microsoft.... just buy 1 million concurrent users.

Site licensing is not an effective pricing model as to make it work it would need to be priced high enough to be the equivalent of (choose large number) X number of users.... which would make the product more expensive.

I have written a VBA example customisation that will prevent a user logging into a second company and using up multiple concurrent users. Let me know if you want a copy.

David Musgrave [MSFT]
Senior Development Consultant
Escalation Engineer - Great Plains
Microsoft Dynamics Support - Asia Pacific

Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions)

http://www.microsoft.com/Dynamics

Any views contained within are my personal views and
not necessarily Microsoft Business Solutions policy.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties,
and confers no rights.

 

[Alcar]

Well I jsut had a similar situation.

I was investigating a sudden lockdown of the GP SQL server when I noticed in the transaction logs over 3000 transactions done by an 'unidentified user'.

After quite some reasearch I foudn out that 2 users in 2 different instances had done some work, tipically insert statements, and resoulted in having their user doing the insert statement and the unrecorded user doing an update statement of that same record at the same exact time.

Could the users have been logged in twice? Mind, they where using the same company.

Still investigating

Daren J. Lahey
Programmer Analyst
FAQ183-874 contains Suggestions for Getting Quick and Appropriate Answers to your questions.

 

[winthropdc]

In Great Plains it is not possible for the same user ID to be logged in twice into the same company.

Is it possible that you have VBA code which uses ADO to access SQL? This would log in as a new instance with the same User ID.

David Musgrave [MSFT]
Senior Development Consultant
Escalation Engineer - Great Plains
Microsoft Dynamics Support - Asia Pacific

Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions)

http://www.microsoft.com/Dynamics

Any views contained within are my personal views and
not necessarily Microsoft Business Solutions policy.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties,
and confers no rights.

 

[Alcar]

Hi David.

We have no customization within the tasks that they where performing.
The only VBA that uses ADO is to QUERY only.
Inserts and updates are all done via macros/integrations/table imports or Dynamic objects (SY90000)

Haven't found anything else so far... a lot to go through ;P

Daren J. Lahey
Programmer Analyst
FAQ183-874 contains Suggestions for Getting Quick and Appropriate Answers to your questions.

 

[VictoriaYudin]

Just my 2 cents: I frequently am logged into as many as 3 or 4 companies of the same GP install at the same time. The only issue I have seen with this is that in older versions of GP exporting to Excel from SmartList sometimes didn't work, however this is no longer an issue in GP 9.0. The only other thing I can think of is that if you're using Integration Manager, you should only have 1 company open. Otherwise, if your computer can handle it and you have enough GP licenses, this should be absolutely fine. We've actually had customers buy additional GP licenses just for this. For someone that is managing multiple companies at the same time, it's often worth the cost of the additional license to not have to constantly switch companies.

Victoria
Flexible Solutions, Inc.