The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

This is an example of Donald Rumsfeld poetry at it’s best.

Let me put it to you that in regards to Dynamics GP most of you are self taught. You had to learn something for a project and you sat down and learnt it. As you got better at GP you could then pretty much work anything out on the fly – without looking like a muppet in front of your client. I am exactly the same.

The issue with the above is that you only learn what you need to learn ‘to get by’. Does ‘Getting By’ cut it in 2010? ‘Getting by’ in business this means you are falling behind and opening the door to competitor. There will be someone out there – usually a competitor who has gone above and beyond ‘getting by’ and is an expert in that topic.

So my point is that when you ‘get by’ there are things you don’t know. Most likely because you think you know, you will never investigate and you will never know! You will find something out when someone asks about it, but this does not help when you are designing a software solution to a problem. Unless someone asks ‘can GP do this …’ you will no have time to investigate. This means that when you are putting together a system design you are not even aware of great functionality that perhaps you should be including.

Now to get specific I apply this theory to SmartList Builder, Excel Report Builder and Navigation List Builder. They are easy, and you all know them – or do you really? Accolade Publishing is about to release a training book that addresses these three modules, and on my first read it is excellent. I had a read through and I learnt things about SmartList Builder I did not know.

When I first looked through the book I was annoyed that neither eOne or Microsoft had written something similar before now. It made things very clear, and showed when and where not to use certain features. Not wanting to go over the top – but this was one of the best training resources I have come across.

Accolade have published books on a wide range of topics that you can find on their website. So if you want to find out what you don’t know about GP – this might be the best place to start.