Hi,
My name is Bobby Jackson, my friends call me Bobby Jackson.. I work for a software vendor located in small town mid America with a big world vision. The company has been in business since 1994 and my ride started in 2000. Along the way we have developed hundreds of enterprise applications servicing many many different industries. The vast majority of these in the Microsoft Dynamics GP channel. This channel has served us well but we wanted to find a way to open up the horizon. There had to be additional opportunities that our experience and skills could service.
Well, a little over a year ago an idea emerged. One morning a thought crossed my mind how we could pull together several Microsoft technologies we already know well and build a solution that could be evolutionary to our organization. That same morning I brought the idea up with another team member and we discussed and dreamed up seemingly endless opportunities. The team collaboration and inspiration process was already beginning to work. It was exciting to me to see how bringing different ideas together adds color to inspiration. I spent the next several weeks running proof of concepts on trouble areas we identified. We wanted to make sure when we proposed our new project to the upstairs gods, we could deliver. Fortunately, we made it through our prototype process and were ready to start our sales pitch to the CEO and decision makers. After several proposal meetings (and some unsanctioned black market development work) we finally got approval to make the project official.
The idea was "U-LINC." This new solution would allow a company to build workflows on virtually any SQL server activity in a system using the SharePoint workflow tool set. Every company has business processes and most can benefit from automating them. U-LINC will apply to any organization running business data on MSSQL and willing to implement SharePoint 2010 Foundation. With some additional adapter pieces we could even bring the workflow process into the Microsoft Dynamics ERP system.
Today we have released the U-LINC Foundation (ULF) and U-LINC for GP (UGP) features. The ULF is the feature that allows users to create "Integrations" against any SQL Server table. Once the Integration is created, SQL server will (in real-time) pass messages off to SharePoint updating an associated List. In turn a SP Workflows can be built on the List allowing notifications to be sent out, approvals to be requested or even other SQL data be changed. The implementation ideas are countless and we are discovering new ones every day.
The UGP is the first of several adapters we are planning on providing. This piece also has some very powerful aspects. First of all the state of a workflow for a GP record can be displayed on virtually any form in GP. If a record, let's say a customer record, is waiting for approval, the Customer Maintenance or Customer Inquire windows can display the status. Furthermore, you can restrict the editing of particular field/s or prevent pressing of a button/s if a record is waiting approval. This is completely configurable for each Integration separately. Our plans are to extend this same adapter functionality to the SL and NAV systems in the near future.
There are some other exciting aspects of this solution that I will try and get to in other posts. Hopefully, I have given you a little background on how this idea started and a taste for what it can do. We are greeting the coming days with anticipation to how we can take this solution and build a great story for our current customers and the ones to come.
Looking ahead!
Bobby
