Microsoft Small Business Manager eCommerce ? Overview

Microsoft Business Solutions Small Business Manager is scaled down Great Plains Dexterity based version of Microsoft Great Plains or former Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise. Small Business Manager first release 7.0 and all the following version was available on MSDE (MS SQL Server 2000 with limited usage and database size ? 2GB maximum). It is nice situation on the market in eCommerce niche ? we see huge number of customers, who have purchased and implemented SBM for their small and mid-size businesses and then realized that customization options for Small Business Manager are very limited: in comparison to Great Plains SBM doesn't have VBA/Modifier, it has very restricted version of Integration Manager. These restrictions lead you, eCommerce developer to direct SQL programming. Again ? being scaled down version of Microsoft Great Plains ? Small Business Manager has a legacy of relatively complex tables structure. tom stored procedures way here:

1. Tables Structure. Small Business Manager has similar to Great Plains structure and similar System DYNAMICS database and the company. As you could see tables structure in Resource description in Great Plains ? so you do in SBM

2. Stored Procs. Yes ? we can go ahead and create stored proc in DYNAMICS and companies databases or Small Business Manager. Now ? there is one issue. Technically Small Business Manager comes with MSDE and MSDE doesn't have lovely tool SQL Server Enterprise Manager with Query Analyzer, etc. So somehow you should deal with this. If you have consulting programmer ? she or he can connect to your MSDE installation, using MS SQL Server Enterprise Manager, installed on consultant's laptop

3. Visual Studio.Net. This is the development tools to use ? because you will need a lot of web-debugging, considering complicated tables structure and records workflow. Some developers might suggest to use VS.Net data designer to link to Great Plains tables ? this idea is rather very difficult to realize, because of the simultaneous population of multiple tables, while creating internet orders: Order Header, Order Lines, Order Comments, Customer Master, Customer Address Master to name a few. So we would recommend sticking to stored proc.

4. SOP. Sales Order Processing. Usually eCommerce solution works around Sales Order Processing tables. The reason is ? it works with Inventoried items and typical eCommerce is ordering specific items off the internet. Look at SOP10100, SOP10200 and other tables with SOP prefix. Also you should know that SOP1XXX ? are so called working tables and you populate mostly these, when orders are transformed to invoices, order record goes to SOP3XXX tables ? these are called historical

5. RM. Receivables Management Module ? When Sales Order Processing Invoices are posted ? they create record in Accounts Receivables or Receivables Management Module. RM has RMXXXX tables and the ones you are interested to know are RM00101 ? customer master and RM00102 ? customer address master

6. Batch Processing. We recommend you consider just order creation via web interface. Then these orders should be processed by operator in Small Business Manager

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns ? we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577! [email protected]

Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies (http://www.albaspectrum.com ) ? USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, New Orleans, Toronto, Montreal and having locations in multiple states and internationally