Free Acumatica Sandbox

Hi Everyone,

Acumatica team released a marketing document, explaining sandbox usage. What I am really happy about is a clear black and white statement there.

We are not robbing our customers when they decided to use Acumatica sandbox for training, testing, archival purposes. Local sandbox is free of charge.

Would you decide to put it on our cloud, it will have some nominal fees involved, but again, if you need it FOC, install locally and enjoy!

WHAT IS AN ACUMATICA SANDBOX?
An Acumatica Sandbox is a separate instance of your Acumatica environment. You can
do anything you want in the sandbox – all without impacting your current deployment
and your users.

A Smooth Transition For New Rollouts Or New Employees
Leverage an Acumatica Sandbox to give new or existing users a hands-on experience
with Acumatica. Safely verify features and functionality, grant limited access to drive
adoption with power users without impacting other groups of less frequent users, and
also test customizations and integrations before making them live.

A Reliable Development Environment
An Acumatica Sandbox allows you to develop and test new solutions for your
organization in an environment that mirrors your live implementation. This enables
you to test real-world scenarios and involve users from different function areas before
going live.

Sandbox + Snapshot = Peace Of Mind
If you have a Private Cloud sandbox, you can use Acumatica’s advanced snapshot
technology to quickly set up your sandbox. You can take a snapshot of your Acumatica
instance at any time, and restore the downloaded copy to the sandbox environment
which you then manage separately. This enables you to test or modify your current
Acumatica instance without impacting users or your live deployment. Your partner can
help set up your first local instance.

WHICH SANDBOX IS RIGHT FOR ME?
Acumatica offers multiple sandbox options to meet your business requirements.
Whether you have a SaaS, SOP, or perpetual license, you can deploy your sandbox
wherever you prefer.

Thank you Acumatica team!

All the best,

Sergey.

Configuring Affinity Mask at IIS Server. Acumatica CPU Licensing.

Dear Partners,

There were many questions recently on how to properly configure the server to match the license purchased from Acumatica.

Under our VAR agreement, the partner is responsible for proper server configuration. Such if customer bought 4 CPU cores, there must only be 4 CPU cores allocated for the Acumatica on IIS server Application Pool. This is not just a legal requirement, that is stated in our product EULA, this is a subject for Acumatica support eligibility and overall stability of the system. 

To address this important question we should keep in mind:

A. Acumatica License Version

B.A. Acumatica Edition (Departmental 2CPU, Divisional 4CPU or Enterprise 8CPU) for versions prior Acumatica 4 

OR

B.B. Acumatica License Size (S 2CPU, M 4CPU, L 8CPU, XL 16CPU)

C. Number of actual CPU cores at your IIS server

Lets assume few scenarios: 

Scenario 1. Your IIS server is sitting on the same hardware box with the SQL server. Total number of CPU cores at the hardware machine is 8 (Eight). License purchased from Acumatica is Perpetual Departmental, meaning you got license for 2 CPUs only. How should we configure the server?

Vital configuration part in this scenario will be to allocate TWO out of EIGHT CPU cores for Acumatica Application Pool. CPU cores are counted from 0 to 7. So lets allocate Core 7 and Core 6 for Acumatica instance. Mask to cover this scenario should be 11000000 in a binary notation or 192 in decimal. All we have to do to stay on a legal ground and to get support from Acumatica and not to risk loose our license is:

Call up IIS Manager from the Main Panel

 Find what is the Application Pool Name for our Acumatica Web Site

Now we should change the Mask settings for that Application Pool

After you choose Advanced Settings for the pool, please modify these settings according to our mask choice

Scenario 2. Your IIS server has 4 CPU cores, and you have purchased the license from Acumatica for M size, which is 4 CPU cores.

No configuration is necessary on the server as number of CPU cores purchased and available on the server matches.

Please note Scenario 2 is the easiest for the End User to provide assurance that there is no license violations or misuse.

All the best,

Sergey.

True Contextual Search from Acumatica 4.2 and up

Hi Everyone,

We have got an interesting feature in 4.2 - a text search functionality.
In version 5 it further extended to a true text search.

If you wish to use it please make sure SQL Full Text Daemon Filter service is up and running, well at least DO NOT DISABLE IT.

In pictures, if you like to see it like this:

Please make sure you have it like this at the SQL Server side:

In Acumatica 5 it is even better:

All the best,

Sergey.

Web Services training in Singapore

Dear Team,

Thanks to an overwhelming demand, we are organising a 

Two Days session for Web Services Integration training to be held in Singapore.

Our Platform Evangelist, Ruslan Devyatko will be in Singapore 

Monday and Tuesday 29,30 September 2014.

Developers and functional consultants are cordially welcome.

Prerequisites for the training will be:

1. Decent Acumatica Functionality Knowledge. 
2. .NET Platform Knowledge. 
3. Acumatica Framework specific knowledge. 
4. Ability to Design Screens in C# using Acumatica Platform.
5. Being Acumatica Partner. Of course :) 

Please book it in advance, there are only 30 seats available. 

We make it FOC this time. Hurry up.

All the best,

Sergey.

Scheduling an Import Process

Hi Guys,


Here is how you can put your Integration with say POS system on schedule in our Import Scenarios process.


First of all, I assume you already created an Import Scenario and tested it with the file uploaded to the Acumatica.


Secondly, you have to ensure that the source file is placed inside Acumatica on time.


Third thing, and that is what I am to explain, we have to schedule a process, inside Acumatica, that will take the file from above. Get the data out of it, and then insert these data into Acumatica screens.


A. Open Import Scenarios process.

B. Select the Import Scenario(s) we need to schedule for execution and select the Action. Save It.

 C. Use the Schedule Button to create a schedule.

 D. Give it a Name and schedule options.

E. Finally you can specify some conditions, on when exactly trigger the scheduled import.

F. Save and Close the Automation Schedules screen.

Well if you wish to review the parameters, at any time just click View from Schedule button, it will bring you to the Automation Schedules screen again.

All the best,

Sergey.

What is our Project Success Rate?

Hi Everyone,

Just heard some of the competition ERP vendors being sued by customers, this is of course very bad sign.
This leads to the question about Right's or Wrong's in a sales strategy, not just in product itself. For example. Over-promising will always lead to a low project success rate. Hiring wrong partners - the same. Using doubtful sales strategies (bulk sales, sales in advance etc.) will cause partners to become unhappy as well, by pushing them to sale more and implement worse.

So what is all about? Is it applicable to Acumatica? I would not use marketing BS here, just wanted to share my experience from partner meetings.

Being in Philippines with our partners. And now I wanted to share the Success Rate for implementation projects in ERP industry. There were reports suggesting that it is very low in the industry, overall.
Some people say it is as low as 50%
Chaos Report

NOT FOR ACUMATICA :)

Surprisingly what I found from Acumatica partners, success in our product implementation is much higher.
For some partners it is constant at stuggering 100%. Example Global Ideology Corporation.
3 years on the market, 6 finished projects, 100% success rate.
Average implementation cycle: 2 month.

So I would love to hear from you guys, being a partner, what is your Customer Happiness index, or Project Success Rate. In a very simple scale. Customer is happy or customer is not.
Just do a simple analysis, compare products if you sell competition.

All the best,
Sergey.

Cloud Concept. Cambodia.

Hi Everyone,

Surprisingly Cambodia market grows very fast, and Cloud is much appreciated there.
Wanted to share some pictures from recent event in Phnom Penh.

Thanks to SunFix and personally Kosol Sieng.

All the best,
Sergey.

Acumatica seems to be the Fastest Web based ERP

Hi Everyone,

Let me propose a contest. Lets measure web based ERPs performance.
After we made multiple installation, demos and research, it seems that Acumatica is the fastest.
Not just fastest but far ahead of any other ERP that uses your browser as a mean of data entry.

I know, this post may look provocative, but I wish to see fair competition results!
Same as we see nowadays in Brazil World Cup :) fair play guys!
Contest please!

Rules are simple.

1. Take the file with 1000 lines of General Ledger transactions.
2. Import it into your ERP using either web services or any data import you have in it. Copy paste will do if you have it in your ERP.
3. Save the transaction.
4. Measure the result.

Below is the video on how it is done in Acumatica. Please take note I purposely make this batch imbalanced to test import process validation. As you may see at the end Debit and Credit for the batch is calculated properly and document require correction for the difference.

Here we go:

If you accept the challenge, please post at the comment your results. Thanks!

All the best,
Sergey.

SQL2014 Compatibility and Editions

Hi All,

There was a question from our partners, whether Acumatica supports SQL2014.
Answer is YES.

Below are screenshots I made from Windows 2012 R2 server with SQL 2014 Express.

Take note on version of SQL

Here is the naming, we can use Named instances of SQL

Here is how it looks using SQL2014

And reports are fine as well

One more thing, people asking if Express is ok. Yes it works, below I put some restrictions for SQL2014 Editions. So please choose if DB less than 10GB then Express is fine. As well as it limits SQL RAM by 1G only.

Cheers,
Sergey.

Adding Field (Selector) with Exotic Attributes (Project, Customer etc.)

Hi Everyone,

Goal for today: reuse attributes of the Acumatica fields.

I am sure most of you when tried to add a new field to Acumatica, was thinking about reusing the selector from an existing fields.

For example, in a screen for RQ Request I would like to add Project ID field.
I know that this field is used in GL Journal Transaction details also in AR Invoice header screen and many other places.

There is one issue, however...

When i look at the Attributes of this field, I found scribblings that impossible to understand and therefore reuse:

This attribute is hardcoded somewhere in Acumatica, and is very hard to understand what is inside this ActiveProjectForModule...

Well, it was a problem till version 4.2. Before the browser did not display special source code.
But now, in Acumatica 4.2 onward, I can find what is behind this sacred code and reuse it the way I want.

Let me show the place where you can search for the code.

Navigate to your web site then App_Data\Code Repository\PX.Objects\PM\Descriptor\
Here we have a file Attribute.cs lets open it and find what we want, basically search for ActiveProjectForModule:

You may see, there are 4 constructor elements inside this class. Choose the best appropriate, I would take simplest one: ActiveProjectForModuleAttribute(string module)

Lets use this attribute for the newly added control at the requisition module:

1. I do not need to default anything.
2. [PM.ActiveProjectForModule(PX.Objects.GL.BatchModule.AR)] will be the attribute.

Why PX.Objects.GL. need to be added in forn - is due to Attributes are not in the main graph form and need to be declared directly.
So we have a single parameter left from the original AR Screen attribute.

And result here we are:

All the best,

Sergey.

Universal Method of Restoring a Snapshot with Customization

Hi Everyone,

There were few questions recently from our support and customers on how to restore snapshots we sent to support centre. Well our customers may use customizations, with fields added to tables.

So this post is to shorten your support response turnaround.

Obviously if you make such a snapshot, it will be hard to restore on plain company. So what should be steps that always work. We have Source company and Destination. Source is at your customer premises. Destination is in our support centre in ... one of the European countries. So here are the steps:

0. Even before you started. Make sure 'A-ca' version on source and destination is the same. Literally.
1. Make a snapshot at source company. Full snapshot, with the customization, on the source company. Export it in a file. Keep it safe.
2. Export source company customization in a file. ZIP file of course. Assume you know how to export customizations in a file. Keep that file too. Please note 1 and 2 is not the same, you will get 2 (two) files at the end.
3. Now take files from 1 and 2  and send them to our support. Make sure they received right files (two files).
4. Now, assume we are support engineer. Create Empty company on newly created database. That is easy, just follow installation guide.
5. Take the file from 2. And upload customization on your empty company. Publish it. restart IIS.
6. Upload the snapshot file from 1. Restore it.
7. You enjoy.

Best Regards,

Sergey.

SaaS Related Questions. Database Growth Rate.

Hi Guys,

We've got a nice resource, SaaS FAQ, on our web site. Thanks to Marketing and Support team!
It answers most of the questions about how do we provision services, how do we backup, where do we store, etc.

SaaS FAQ on Acumatica Web Site

Another thing, if you experience the service disruption, we have emergency channel to report for it via web portal here:

Service Outage Report

Finally, as our price list includes Service section, please do not hesitate to visit this page for Acumatica Provisioned Services

Services from Acumatica

We also have a document, explaining the DB growth depending on different modules transactions amount.
I would like to copy it here:

Please note, this report does not put into consideration amount of Entities, like for example Fixed Assets.
I am going to stress, number of entities is important only if its significant, say more than tens of thousands.
If we take Fixed Assets module, the size of the tables associated with Assets depends on
A. Asset Useful Life in Month.
B. Number of assets.

So if our assets are in average live for 5 years = 60 month, and we have 10,000 of assets. Then multiplication will tell the actual number of sizable records in the system = 600,000 historical records.
If we purchase 1,000 assets yearly. Add 60,000 historical records every year.

Based on real life example, each asset consumes around 50kB space in the DB. So to speak, 20,000 of assets will grow your database by 1 GB. Its a one time growth, but you need to account for it.

Other modules like Inventory or Accounts Receivable are not so sensitive to number of Entities, unless there is a really big number of them.

All the best,

Sergey.

Quick Logout. Managing Toolbar Buttons.

Hi Everyone,

For those of you having more than 10-20 companies in your Acumatica ERP instance, when trying to log out for the system, user should scroll down to LogOut Button.

Same to access User profile or Favorites. Please find below the standard positioning of the Log out and Companies. If we have 3 companies - it is not an issue, but when list grows - it becomes very unpleasant for the user every time scroll down to Log Out button to quit. As a result, number of open sessions grows, server slows down.

 We can swap Companies Section and Log Out/Favorites/Profile by modifying Main.aspx.cs file in the root of Acumatica WEB site. Please navigate to the root first:

Now lets open this file and modify the content:

Before Modification

After Modification

After file saved please restart IIS. Then result will be like below:

Now 2 clicks -> User logged Out, no scrolling is needed.

All the best,
Sergey.

Securing the Branch Access

Hi Guys,

Quick post, when it comes to multiple branches sitting inside single database of your Acumatica instance, we may need to assign login and access rights to different users to see different branches.

So this is about tenancy that we have inside Acumatica. We can have multiple companies, or tenants, and this will be a topic for another article, and inside each tenant I can create multiple Branches. These branches, or related companies, will share same COA, same customers/vendors etc. But, important note, we can report everything separately, including VAT tax. So this is important feature for those running multiple company business under one roof.

So how to secure access to each branch for certain people only. Very simple:

1. Create Roles with somewhat resembling branch name or code. These security roles will be only used for branch access control.

2. Add users to that Role, the only users who need access to South branch in my example.

3. And the last step, specify this role at the Branch maintenance screen.

All access will be set automatically by the Acumatica, based on the above settings.

Best,

Sergey.

Refreshing Data in Excel from Acumatica Inquiries

Hi Everyone,

In Acumatica we have a powerful feature - inquiry, where if you export it to Excel, it takes the link to the data in Acumatica with it. So later you can just refresh the data right from Excel.

The main problem with that is - when you try to refresh the data, it prompts that Basic Authentication is not allowed for say Office 2010 to get the data from the server.

We can easily overcome it by adding the following 2 records to the registry.

1. Take these records.
2. Save them into a Notepad.
3. Save Notepad file as .reg
4. Run it.

This will add them to your PC registry. Alternatively you can simply add them manually to the registry using RegEdit editor.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Internet]
"BasicAuthLevel"=dword:00000002

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\WebClient\Parameters]
"BasicAuthLevel"=dword:00000002 

Now let me explain what exactly is the error and what will happen at the end when we fixed it.

Open Inquiry then press Excel button to export its content to Excel:

When file is saved, try to open it, then press Refresh Data button, here is what will happen in 99% of the cases:

It says, Basic Authentication is disabled by Default for access of non SSL servers.
I am not sure for demo purposes how many of us use SSL...
So the only way to solve it, either use SSL server or simply allow Basic Authentication to get used by Office 2010 by default.

Please use the Registry amendment above to allow Basic Authentication.

Then, after restarting your PC here what will happen:

Here we need to provide username and password in a format user@company
For example for Demo company that I have on my PC it will be:

Then after pressing OK it goes to the server, retrieves all the records

And done, success:

Well, if you are too much concerned about security and do not wish to keep Basic Authentication always open, just change the values back to 1 from 2 in the reg file. :)

All the best,

Sergey.

Access to SQL Server by SQL Query Analyzer or Management Studio.

Hi Everyone,

As Acumatica runs on SQL server, we may need, time to time to access our Database by Management Studio. And there could be connectivity issue if we try it, just out of the box...

Most of the times, since we are on the cloud, the SQL server is somewhere outside, not in our office. To access it, we need to follow three simple steps:

1. Open up firewall on SQL server side for the port used by SQL Server for listening.
2. Make sure we specified correct port on the SQL server properties.
3. Make sure on the CLIENT side we choose the same port to access the server.

First.

Open the firewall for SQL port 1433 for Inbound Connections. This need to be done AT THE SERVER SIDE. So please Remote to the server then open this up:

Click at the Inbound Rules, Add new rule, specify that it is for the PORT type of the rule. Then add TCP port 1433 to it.

Well next you choose network profile from where you allow to open it up. Most of the time Domain is enough.

You may need to restart Firewall Service on the server for the rule to take force.

Second. 

Let's open the port for listening at the SQL server side. Here is the hint, if we use NAMED INSTANCE for the SQL server, port on SQL side will be assigned DYNAMICALLY, which is obviously NOT what we want. We have to fix it to be STATIC. Most of the times, historically, we used 1433 port. So let it be 1433 for my example. It is done Here:

Next would be to press right click on TCP/IP protocol, choose properties, then you will see list of IPs.
Scroll down to IPAll or choose the one that your server is configured and:
A. Erase the entry at the Dynamic Port
B. Place 1433 at the TCP Port field
Result:

Click Apply. Then Restart the SQL server.

Third.

Funny thing but this seems to be the most important step. On the client side, when you call SQL Management Studio, please use the following syntax. You NEED to indicate the port at the server IP address :) :

Please take note on that comma port number :)
The thing is, even if you indicated the dynamic off on the SQL, client still thinks its own ways when talking to the SQL server.

All the best,

Sergey.