Microsoft Dynamics GP is licensed on the
basis of concurrent users. This means that if a company has ten user
licenses, any ten users can log in at once but the eleventh user is
prevented from logging in. Many firms also manage multiple companies in
Dynamics GP and users have a tendency to log in to more than one company
at a time to make switching between companies faster. However, each
company login uses up a concurrent license. In our previous example with
ten licenses, if each user logs into two companies simultaneously, only
five individuals will actually get to log in.
For companies where the number of actual
users is very close to the number of licenses this presents a real
problem. I've seen cases where an AP clerk can't log in to print checks
and a controller couldn't log in to review accounts because users were
logged in to multiple companies. An obvious solution to this problem is
to purchase additional licenses. However, that is also an expensive
solution. A better option is to prevent users from logging in to
multiple companies.
Unfortunately, there is no built-in functionality to
prevent users from logging in multiple times so in this recipe we'll
turn to a hack from a surprising place—Microsoft.
How to do it...
To prevent users from logging in to multiple Dynamics GP companies simultaneously:
2. Download and save the file Prevent User Logging In To Multiple Companies.zip to your desktop:
3. Right-click on the downloaded file and select Extract. Then click on the Extract button.
4. After the files extract repeat this process with the new file named v10.00 Prevent User Logging In To Multiple Companies.zip. Despite the v10.00 designation in the filename, this file works just fine in version 2010.
5. Back in Dynamics GP select Microsoft Dynamics GP | Tools | Customize | Customization Maintenance.
6. Click on Import and then on Browse. Navigate to the location where you extracted the v10.00 Prevent User Logging In To Multiple Companies.zip file on the desktop and select the MicrosoftActiveXDataObjects 2.8 Reference.package file. Click on OK to install.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 using the SwitchCompany.Package file.
8. Apply this customization to each user's workstation using steps 5, 6, and 7.
9.
Once applied, users will be prevented from logging in to multiple
companies simultaneously. If they try, users will get a message and an
indication of what company they are already logged in to:
How it works...
This hack uses a free, unsupported Visual Basic for
Applications (VBA) file created by David Musgrave, a developer at
Microsoft. David was kind enough to release this code as a free benefit
to the Dynamics GP community.
There's more...
There are some additional things to look out for when cooking up this recipe.
Additional considerations
Since this hack uses a VBA customization, companies
will need to be licensed to either build or run customizations in
Dynamics GP. For companies requiring a Customization Site Enabler
license, it is available for a fee through a Microsoft value added
reseller.
If there are any issues with installation there are additional troubleshooting steps in the included Installation Instructions.txt file.
