Hands On With the GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools: Administrator Settings – Usability Tab

Winthrop DCThis post is part of the Hands On With the GP Power Tools (GPPT) – Administrator Tools series in which I am taking a hands on look at the various tools offered by GPPT.

In this little subseries on the Administrator Settings (GP Power Tools area page >> Settings >> Administrator Settings), the second piece of functionality is configured via the Usability tab:

Administrator Settings - Usability

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Hands On With the GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools: Administrator Settings – Colors Tab

Winthrop DCThis post is part of the Hands On With the GP Power Tools (GPPT) – Administrator Tools series in which I am taking a hands on look at the various tools offered by GPPT.

In this little subseries on the Administrator Settings (GP Power Tools area page >> Settings >> Administrator Settings), the first piece of functionality I’m going to cover is the Company Color Scheme Settings. This is functionality which I have written about before in the Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 Cookbook when GP Power Tools was still the Support Debugging Tool and was free from Microsoft; this chapter was cut from the 2016 Cookbook as we were only covering standard Dynamics GP functionality.

This is one of the features which I already knew well and liked; the main use I, and my clients make of this function, is to make it obvious whether a user is logged into a live or test company (and sometimes which of the live companies).

To activate the Company Color Scheme Settings function, mark the Activate Company based Color Schemes checkbox and then use the Select Theme Colors to select from one of the many themes available:

Administrator Settings - Colour tab

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Hands On With the GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools: Administrator Settings – Introduction

Winthrop DCThis post is part of the Hands On With the GP Power Tools (GPPT) – Administrator Tools series in which I am taking a hands on look at the various tools offered by GPPT.

The Administrator Settings window (GP Power Tools area page >> Setup >> Administrator Settings) gives access to a number of tools which allows the look and usability of Dynamics GP to be changed as well as allowing the configuration of some of the features of GP Power Tools itself.

The functionality of this window is a bit much to cover in a single post, so over the next few posts, I’m going to step through this functionality.

Hands On With the GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools: Deny Based Security – Review

Winthrop DCThis post is part of the Hands On With the GP Power Tools (GPPT) – Administrator Tools series in which I am taking a hands on look at the various tools offered by GPPT.

Over the last four posts, I’ve introduced Deny Based Security and taken a look at the Enhanced Security, Security Denied and Security Hidden windows.

When I heard David discussing Deny Based Security I was a little apprehensive. It is adding another layer of complexity and one which sounded like it would be complex to configure and maintain. However, once I got my hands on GP Power Tools, it appears to be easy to configure and copy configuration between users, so this part of my concern was unfounded.

The Security Denied/Hidden windows allow you to view either an individual user or all users which allows you to easily review the whole configuration of Deny Based Security.

One important point to remember about Deny Based Security, is that the Security Denied functionality, once applied, works whether GP Power Tools is installed or not, but the Security Hidden functionality requires the GP Power Tools to remain installed (which is the recommended configuration anyway).

This point would be especially important if for some reason you are planning to remove GP Power Tools entirely, you need to ensure all Security Denied configuration is removed.

Hands On With the GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools: Deny Based Security – Security Hidden

Winthrop DCThis post is part of the Hands On With the GP Power Tools (GPPT) – Administrator Tools series in which I am taking a hands on look at the various tools offered by GPPT.

The Security Hidden (GP Power Tools area page >> Reports >> Security Hidden) window works in the same way as the Security Denied one:

Security Hidden

Hands On With the GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools: Deny Based Security – Security Denied

Winthrop DCThis post is part of the Hands On With the GP Power Tools (GPPT) – Administrator Tools series in which I am taking a hands on look at the various tools offered by GPPT.

The Enhanced Security window is good for configuring deny baed security for a user, but is not great for reviewing what has been configured. Instead there is a Security Denied (GP Power Tools area page >> Reports >> Security Denied) window available:

Security Denied

The Security Denied window is also used for maintenance, exporting and reporting of the Deny Based Security — Security Denied data. Using this window allows all the Security Denied for users to be easily viewed without having to explore the tree views on the Enhanced Security window.

Changes made in the window are made immediately and do not need the OK Button to be clicked.

As the image above shows, when a user is selected, the Security Denied items are listed in the scrolling window. You can use the checkboxes to restrict the types of item shown. Marking an item allows it to be removed from Deny Based Security by clicking the Delete button.

By changing the Display Mode drop down you can change the view between the following four options:

  1. User and Company
  2. User for all Companies
  3. All Users for Company
  4. All Users for all Companies

The ability to view all of the configuration at the same time is a very good one, which is an absolute necessity.

You can use the Export button to export the content of the scrolling window to either file or email. The export is of every item in the list and not just the selected ones; the intended purpose of this is for auditing security configuration.

Hands On With the GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools: Deny Based Security – Enhanced Security

Winthrop DCThis post is part of the Hands On With the GP Power Tools (GPPT) – Administrator Tools series in which I am taking a hands on look at the various tools offered by GPPT.

The Enhanced Security window (GP Power Tools area page >> Reports >> Enhanced Security) allows you to view the security resources and/or operations via the navigation (menus and area pages) or dictionary model:

Enhanced Security

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Hands On With the GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools: Introduction to Deny Based Security

Winthrop DCThis post is part of the Hands On With the GP Power Tools (GPPT) – Administrator Tools series in which I am taking a hands on look at the various tools offered by GPPT.

Microsoft Dynamics GP’s security is constructed on a pessimistic security role and task model (users have no access unless granted); an operation (such as the ability to open a window or print a report) is assigned to a task which is, in turn, assigned to a role, which are then assigned to a user or, preferably, multiple users:

Security Setup Example

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GP Power Tools System Status Report Updated To Include Only Current Company

Microsoft Dynamics GPWhen, in my Hands On With the GP Power Tools — System Module series, I covered the Screenshot tool which allows users to send screenshots of problems to the administrator. The email also includes a system status report which, in the current version, includes information on the system and all company databases. This is usually fine, but I have one client who has 200+ databases and the email takes a long time to generate the report.

I mentioned this to Winthrop DC and they have confirmed that the next build of GP Power Tools will include some new functionality to address this issue.

A new option has been introduced, which defaults to off, which will include only the system and current database in the system status report; setting the option to on will add all company databases to the system status report.

The value is stored in Administrator Settings for normal use and on the Trigger Setup window for when Triggers are created to use the ScreenShot feature.

Hands On With the GP Power Tools – Administrator Tools: Security Analyzer

Winthrop DCThis post is part of the Hands On With the GP Power Tools (GPPT) – Administrator Tools series in which I am taking a hands on look at the various tools offered by GPPT.

The Security Analyzer is a tool for administrators to analyze the security settings of their Microsoft Dynamics GP system. It is designed to highlight potential security risks, provide information on unused settings as well as provide a comparison between security access and security resources actually used.

The Security Analyzer has over twenty queries which can be displayed in both Summary and Detail formats. The queries are divided into System Level queries and User & Companies queries. For the Users & Companies queries, you can select the User and/or Company to limit the query data to.

Be aware, some of the queries in the Security Analyzer window use the Security Log window’s activity data captured by the Security Activity Tracking option enabled from the Administrator Settings window, which I covered in this post.

Once the data is displayed, it can be exported if desired, or used to drill down to the relevant system windows to be able to make changes to the system and security settings.

When you launch Security Analyzer (GP Power Tools area page >> Reports >> Security Analyzer), you will be prompted to confirm that you are on a machine whiuch has all Product Dictionaries installed; click Yes to proceed:

Microsoft Dynamics GP - Security Analyzer should only be executed froma  machine wich has all product Dictionaries installed. Continue?

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