Integration Frustration: Why Microsoft Dynamics GP Integration Tools Need a Kickstart

I've done a ton of integration work with Microsoft Dynamics GP recently and it's left me frustrated. The common tools, Integration Manager and eConnect still have some frustrating holes. As a result, any third party tools, like SmartConnect, that rely on eConnect have the same limitations. 

An example I keep bumping into over and over is integrating EFT information for Vendors. In an initial implementation, we generally use the Table Import feature to populate EFT data because it's all stored in one table. The problem comes when companies want regular vendor integrations with EFT. For example, one firm I know has affiliates that they pay in a program similar to Amazon Associates or Google's AdWords. The affiliates can sign up or change their payment information online and the changes need to be integrated into Dynamics GP.  Except that there is no way to regularly integrate new or updated EFT information in conjunction with vendor changes without writing custom code.

It seems to me that Dynamics GP's integration tools have stagnated. Integration Manager's default connectors continue to be slow and buggy. The only recent "advancement" was the replacement of the SQL optimized connectors with eConnect adapters. This helped Microsoft but it did very little for the end user or consultant. eConnect-based integrations are just as fast as their SQL predecessors but the fields missing in the Integration Manager interface for high speed SQL connections are still missing in the eConnect-based interface. And users still can't reasonably schedule an Integration Manager integration without shelling out for an Integration Manager add-in.  Silly, I know.

For some reason Microsoft just keeps repaving the integration cow path in Dynamics GP when they should be building an integration super highway, with Dynamics GP as the ...