How to move your security settings from Test into Production

Terry Blaser - Click for blog homepageMy convergence sessions on GP Security lead to many interesting questions, but this one seems to be a popular topic.  Many customers who are on GP 9 or prior have setup a GP10 or GP2010 test environment, and have spent a large amount of time setting up their security Roles and Tasks.  Now that they have done all this beautiful work the question is, how do they move this from there test environment into production?  The popular answer among the attendees was to use SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), while this is a totally valid technique, it requires a bit of setup and a bit of understanding of all the tables involved.  The better option is to use the Support Debugging Tool for Microsoft Dynamics GP.  This tool has a great import/export data feature that will make moving your security settings a snap.  There is even a template that exists that has all the tables required all ready setup.  Specific instructions on how to do this are on the Developing for Dynamics GP blog site: How to transfer Security Tasks and Roles between Systems.

Another question that was frequently asked had to do with resetting the default roles and tasks.  Let's say that you were playing around with the default roles and tasks, and making changes to both.  After your playing was done, you wanted to reset the settings back to the default, but  there is no built-in way of doing this.  I spend some time planning a way of doing this using the Support Debugging Tool, but my good buddy Mariano Gomez beat me to the punch; Mariano's blog post even includes the default Roles and Tasks that you can import into your system.  Check out Resetting Security Roles and Task with the Support Debugging Tool on Mariano's blog site.

Terry