As more people have made the switch to home working I keep getting lots of questions around using Dynamics GP from home. Although there’s a lot of information on this subject already, I also wanted to document this on my blog as well. (plus I can provide a link to my favourite article on this subject as well :))

In short using the Dynamics GP rich client is only supported in a LAN environment. Essentially this means that the Dynamics GP client application and the SQL server hosting the databases need to reside on the same LAN. When connected in this way there’s a high speed and reliable connection between the Dynamics GP application and the SQL server, which is the environment Dynamics GP is designed to run in. Therefore its not advisable, or indeed supported, to use a locally installed Dynamics GP client from home, via a VPN using your home internet connection.

Although it may appear to work, if you were to use a Dynamics GP client installed locally from home you’d at best suffer performance issues, and at worst cause potential data inconsistency when posting. This is because batches are much more likely to “crash” or get interrupted when posted in this environment (i.e. a WAN environment).

Therefore if you wish to use Dynamics GP from home the best option would be to connect and use Dynamics GP via an RDS server that resides on the same LAN as the SQL server. Alternatively you could connect to a PC in the office that has GP installed either via RDP or some other screen sharing software. Also, if its installed and available, there’s also the possibility of using the Dynamics GP Web Client for remote working.

As to “why” you can’t use Dynamics GP safely from home, David Musgrave of Winthrop Development Consultants wrote an excellent article on this subject which can be found here.

Thanks for reading.

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