Statement email follies

Statement email folliesFollow
Steve Erbach
Steve ErbachJul 08, 2014 12:55 PM
Dear Group, This could easily be a very long email…but I’ll ask only one question for now! GP 2013 …
1. Statement email follies

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Steve Erbach
Posted Jul 08, 2014 12:55 PM
Dear Group,

This could easily be a very long email…but I’ll ask only one question for now!

GP 2013 has a Sales E-mail Setup screen where we can enable the Sales Documents we want to be able to email to customers. We have only enabled Customer Statements. We have a Message ID selected and the “Have Replies Sent to:” address is an Outlook Group name: AccountReceivables. So far so good.

However, the Receivables Management documentation says that when Statements are generated and emailed to the customers, “the From address will be the e-mail address of the user who’s logged in to the MAPI-compliant mail service”…and that has been our experience. Any emails sent by customers back to us go to the person who “physically” generated and emailed the statements. The Sales E-mail Setup | Have Replies Sent to address is ignored/overridden.

We’re hoping to make use of the Group name instead of the address of the person doing the emailing so that all the members of the Account Receivables email group will get any replies from customers…but how do we keep that address from being overridden?

Sincerely,

Steve Erbach
Application Developer
WOW Logistics
Appleton WI
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2. RE: Statement email follies

Ryan Meyer
Posted Jul 08, 2014 02:40 PM
Hey Steve.

I had this exact problem with a client and ended up filing a case with MSFT on it as they had not seen this problem.

What we ended up figuring out is that even though the Email fields will recognize an email group (AccountsReceivable in your case) and let you save it that way, something in the way the outbound email is coded does not allow an email group to be the “Reply All” recipient. I don’t remember all the details, but I think that even though GP can “read” that the group exists, it can’t see the members of that group to code to the “Reply” field when an email is sent. When it can’t figure that out, it defaults to the original sender.

The work-around this is to have a “real” email address (AccountsReceivable@companyname.com) in lieu of a group. I know it’s not ideal, but doing it that way does work. Might be a good product suggestion for them to make groups work with the email functionality.

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Ryan Meyer
Senior Business Solutions Associate
McGladrey LLP
Seattle WA
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3. RE: Statement email follies

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Steve Erbach
Posted Jul 08, 2014 06:12 PM
Ryan,

I read your message while our network infrastructure manager was sitting next to me. I’ve been wrestling with this issue quite a bit today, and I’d enlisted his help.

We discussed your nicely detailed solution/work-around. I think that it’ll work just dandy. It will only require a change to a setting in Microsoft Exchange so that the members of the Account Receivables group see the new WOW_Accts_Receivable Inbox as well as their own. Could be just the ticket!

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Steve Erbach
Application Developer
WOW Logistics
Appleton WI
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4. RE:Statement email follies

GPUG ALL STAR
Beat Bucher
Posted Jul 08, 2014 09:48 PM
Steve,
following Steve ‘s answer I was going to suggest to apply the same trick we use for our purchasing department that has a common mailbox where all the authorized employees can access to read and send emails on behalf of the department… This would automatically put the common mailed from adress to the outgoing messages…

——————————————-
Beat Bucher
Business Analyst, GP Administrator
Forensic Technology Inc.
Cote St-Luc QC/Canada
514-489-4267
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5. RE: Statement email follies

David Gersten
Posted Jul 09, 2014 10:22 AM
As I read this post it seems to me to be more of an Exchange issue not a GP issue. A “group” email is really just a pseudo email account, an alias account. In Exchange, I don’t even believe you can send an outbound email from the group/distribution list/alias account too. And if you can, it requires a lot of set up in exchange. I do think that what you have done as your work around makes the best sense. I am not an exchange Guru, but have had to do similar things when trying to send out emails from groups/aliases vs actual mailboxes in exchange.

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David Gersten
Customer Success Manager
Bond Consulting Services
Long Beach CA
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6. RE: Statement email follies

James Grant
Posted Jul 09, 2014 09:48 AM
Hi,

I would encourage you to enter a suggestion in at https://connect.microsoft.com/ in order for our team to track this suggestions/bug to correct in future releases.

When using the new statement functionality introduced in GP2013, our application should not be firing any errors referencing MAPI since you would need to have Exchange as the Email Server Type selected in the System Preferences.

When using Exchange, it will send the email based on the login used when prompted for Email credentials; this piece does require that you enter an email/password to authenticate the user. This does differ from MAPI as that would require Outlook (or MAPI compliant email application) to be launched and would take that specific profile. I know that some companies will basically create an email address specifically to send out all transactions/statements from the application then have all replies sent to same address (or use reply all to indicate a specific email address).

Thanks,

——————————————-
James Grant
Program Manager
Microsoft
GA
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7. RE: Statement email follies

Cindy Ventura
Posted Jul 10, 2014 06:20 PM
We have Exchange as the Email server because we have 64 bit office. I thought that if you had the 32 bit office you could still use MAPI.

With ours (using Exchange), we put a generic email address (created for our A/R Department) in the message set up and that is the one that is receiving the replies. It used to come back to the accountant who sent it, but the one we tested goes to our A/R email address when you hit reply. We have just gone live on GP2013 so we haven’t done this a lot yet.

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Cindy Ventura
Assistant Controller
CBC Restaurant Corp.
Dallas TX
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8. RE: Statement email follies

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Steve Erbach
Posted Jul 10, 2014 09:07 AM
Ryan,

Well, it turns out that what we thought was a fine solution has already been tried and shown to be inadequate…at least in our company. My supervisor had tried entering a single email address of one of the accounting staff as the default FROM address on the Sales E-mail Setup screen. He then modified the email address for the customer to be his own address. Then he generated a single statement for the selected customer and emailed it…only to have it come from his own address rather than from the accounting staffer’s address.

So I’m essentially back to square one.

Now having looked into this issue even further I have another question that has been vexing me:

When I open the Customer Maintenance screen, pick a Customer, and click on the Internet Addresses icon next to the Address ID, I get the Internet Information screen. All well and good.

However, along with the “Internet Information” section — which includes fields for E-mail, Home Page, FTP Site, etc., there is an “E-mail Addresses” section. What confuses the heck out of me is that the “To”, “Cc”, and “Bcc” buttons lead to my company email list.

The Help screen for the Internet Information screen is no help at all:

“Use the Internet Information window to track Internet-related information about your company, employees, customers, salespeople, vendors and items. If you’ve set up multiple addresses for your company, customers or vendors, you can track Internet information for each address.”

Okaaaaayyyyy. I see that the drop-down list at the top of the Internet Information screen says “Customers” and the Customer ID and Address ID are filled in properly with the customer I selected. But what are the “E-mail Addresses” buttons doing there? I write enough software to know that portions of a screen can be hidden based on selection criteria. Clearly that isn’t happening here.

I did a grep search on all of the PDF documentation I have for GP and found this in the Receivables Management manual:

“To send documents such as invoices, sales quotes, and customer statements in e-mail, use the Internet Information window to enter To, Cc, and Bcc e-mail addresses. See the System Setup documentation (Help >> Printable Manuals) for more information.”

Again, the “To” button leads directly to my company’s email list. I understand that some screens in GP are multi-purpose; but why would there be places to put my company’s email addresses on a Customer’s Internet Information page?

Perhaps I’m hyperventilating a bit here. I apologize. But the screwiness of the e-mail options (there are others, believe me) has led to a fair amount of wheel-spinning.

Any ideas?

Thank you very much,

Steve Erbach
Application Developer
WOW Logistics
Appleton WI
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——————————————-
Original Message:
Sent: 07-08-2014 02:39 PM
From: Ryan Meyer
Subject: Statement email follies

Hey Steve.

I had this exact problem with a client and ended up filing a case with MSFT on it as they had not seen this problem.

What we ended up figuring out is that even though the Email fields will recognize an email group (AccountsReceivable in your case) and let you save it that way, something in the way the outbound email is coded does not allow an email group to be the “Reply All” recipient. I don’t remember all the details, but I think that even though GP can “read” that the group exists, it can’t see the members of that group to code to the “Reply” field when an email is sent. When it can’t figure that out, it defaults to the original sender.

The work-around this is to have a “real” email address (AccountsReceivable@companyname.com) in lieu of a group. I know it’s not ideal, but doing it that way does work. Might be a good product suggestion for them to make groups work with the email functionality.

——————————————-
Ryan Meyer
Senior Business Solutions Associate
McGladrey LLP
Seattle WA
——————————————-

 

 

9. RE: Statement email follies

James Grant
Posted Jul 10, 2014 10:26 AM
Hi Steve,

Do this, close completely out of GP and then log back into the application.

When you click on the To button, it should be prompting you with an Exchange Log On form asking for your Email Address and Password. If you are not being prompted for this type of information, then you have MAPI selected as your Server Type in the System Preferences form for the installation (this would apply system wide; not per user); the preferences are found tools-setup-system-system preferences.

When using MAPI, it will always send the statements/transactions based on the profile that you are logged into at time of being sent. If you don’t have Outlook (or MAPI compliant) you will not be able to send since the application does not know the profile.

If you set the system to Exchange, then emails will be sent using the email entered at the time you are prompted by the Exchange Log On form. This will only prompt once per session, when you either attempt to email or change settings.

When you click on the To button, it will look at your address book to select the email address you would like to have assigned to the customer. If you don’t hold the customers addresses in your address book, then you would want to enter it manually on the To line and then click Save. These are saved in the Internet Information form based on the Address ID that was selected.

To use the new Statement functionality that was introduced for GP2013 (using word templates) you have to use Exchange as your Email Server Type. if you are using MAPI, the system is using the statement process introduced in older versions of GP and uses Email address found on the Customer Maintenance Options form.

Your original question pertains to using a distribution group alias as the Send Replies To:; which you can enter as a suggestion and we can investigate further for future versions of the application.

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James Grant
Program Manager
Microsoft
GA

 

 

10. RE: Statement email follies

Ryan Meyer
Posted Jul 10, 2014 12:27 PM
Hi Steve.

I’m not very experienced with the “back-end” of email so I can’t add a lot to James’ explanation and I’m sure he knows better than I anyway.

The one thing I may be able to add is that if you have two email profiles set up on the workstation doing the emailing, GP will send from the one marked as “Default.” So I’m guessing if your test subject went and marked the AR email as default rather than his own, it would probably work as desired.

Based on James’ explanation though, it sounds like it would probably just be easier to switch to Exchange and then you shouldn’t run into this issue. If for some reason you need to stay on MAPI, the above might be a work-around.

By changing the Default, I mean going into Outlook (assuming Outlook 2010+), choosing File->Account Settings->Account Settings and setting the AR email as the default. This could obviously have other repercussions though so it may not be an option.

——————————————-
Ryan Meyer
Senior Business Solutions Associate
McGladrey LLP
Seattle WA
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11. RE: Statement email follies

Cindy Ventura
Posted Jul 11, 2014 08:52 AM
Just be aware that if you set the system to Exchange, you will not be able to attach PDF documents (unless they added this in 2013R2).

If you have 64 Bit Outlook, you don’t have a choice and have to use Exchange. This removes some of the options that you would have under MAPI. We switched our PDF statements to the Word Templates and it appears to be working well.

We had to create a message to accompany the statements because it was sending the email without a subject, Different process, but I think it works as well.

——————————————-
Cindy Ventura
Assistant Controller
CBC Restaurant Corp.
Dallas TX
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12. RE: Statement email follies

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Steve Erbach
Posted Jul 16, 2014 05:45 PM
Cindy,

>> If you have 64 Bit Outlook, you don’t have a choice and have to use Exchange. This removes some of the options that you would have under MAPI. We switched our PDF statements to the Word Templates and it appears to be working well. <<

We use 32-bit Outlook, so that isn’t an issue.

But when you say, “We switched our PDF statements to the Word Templates and it appears to be working well,” I’m not sure what you mean. Sending a statement via MAPI email means that a Word template is used to generate the statement — it’s got that bit of fountain fill at the top of each statement. So if you “switched” to the Word Template, what does that mean?

Thanks for your input very much.

Sincerely,

Steve Erbach
Application Developer
WOW Logistics
Appleton WI
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13. RE: Statement email follies

Cindy Ventura
Posted Jul 18, 2014 06:20 PM

Steve,

Our Partner had created a custom report using Report Writer for us so we did not use Word Templates until we upgraded to GP2013. Then we had to because we have to use Exchange and couldn’t use the custom reports which were pdf’s.

Sorry I muddied the waters.

Cindy
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Cindy Ventura
Assistant Controller
CBC Restaurant Corp.
Dallas TX
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14. RE: Statement email follies

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Steve Erbach
Posted Jul 21, 2014 09:10 AM
Cindy,

>> Sorry I muddied the waters. <<

Just remember Rule #6 promulgated by Leroy Jethro Gibbs on the CBS drama, “N.C.I.S.”: Never apologize — it’s a sign of weakness!

And thank you for the extra information. I’m a detail-oriented kind of guy.

Sincerely,

Steve Erbach
Application Developer
WOW Logistics
Appleton WI
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15. RE: Statement email follies

James Grant
Posted Jul 22, 2014 03:16 PM
Hi,

Just to clarify a few responses I have seen in the thread:

1) If you have MAPI selected for Email type, it will always send the documents based off the profile that is launched at the time you send the document.

2) If you are using 64-bit Office, you will need to switch to Exchange in the System Preference. Using Exchange will allow prompt the user for email address and password the first time they send an email or change email setting during a session of GP (closing GP and launching GP again starts a new session)

3) Exchange is only email type that can be used in conjunction with Web Client installations.

4) PDF using Exchange does work on desktop client as of SP1 for GP2013. So if you are on the latest release of GP2013, you should be able to send your statements and documents in a .PDF format if you choose to do so.

5) PDF and XPS are not options to send documents if you are using Web Client.

 

——————————————-
James Grant
Program Manager
Microsoft
GA
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16. RE: Statement email follies

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Steve Erbach
Posted Jul 16, 2014 05:40 PM
James,

>> To use the new Statement functionality that was introduced for GP2013 (using word templates) you have to use Exchange as your Email Server Type. if you are using MAPI, the system is using the statement process introduced in older versions of GP and uses Email address found on the Customer Maintenance Options form. <<

I’m now a bit more confused. Our “System Preferences” say MAPI. Our GP Partner tells me that if we want to send PDF statements then we must leave it set at MAPI.

Sincerely,

Steve Erbach
Application Developer
WOW Logistics
Appleton WI
——————————————-

 

17. RE: Statement email follies

GPUG ALL STAR
Beat Bucher
Posted Apr 04, 2022 06:13 PM
My Dear @Steve Erbach,
I know this is old discussions, but still of actuality when it comes to e-mailing out of GP.
Lots of customers are running GP with a ticking time bomb right now​ as anything that’s below 18.3 does not support “Modern auth” required by Microsoft for Exchange e-mailing (EXO = EXchange Online).
There is a suggestion that was posted that I’d like to move up in the wait queue for Microsoft, as it would bring in some more relief to the many GP customers that have big AR & AP departments with multiple users and want to use the common “Shared” mailbox, which currently only work in MAPI mode, as it’s one way of cheating GP to use a default profile set to that common mailbox. EXO doesn’t support that due to some limitation related to MS Graph API (don’t ask, there are links out there if you’re interested in the deep details) which GP Modern Auth uses right now.
We need to get Microsoft GP move really into the post-modern 21st century to be more competitive with D365BC and the like.
Go and vote for it:
https://experience.dynamics.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=546251fd-5633-ec11-b76a-0003ff45ac6d

——————————
Beat Bucher
Business Analyst, Dynamics GP SME
Montreal QC/Canada
@GP_Beat http://www.gp-geek.com
Montreal QC GPUG Chapter Leader
MBS MVP (2015-2018)
All-Star 2013
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18. RE: Statement email follies

TOP CONTRIBUTOR
Steve Erbach
Posted Apr 04, 2022 06:39 PM
Béat, mon ami!

What on earth made you look up this almost 8-year-old thread?

I went and voted for that GP Application Idea.

We use Binary Stream’s eMailer Manager for our sales invoicing. I wonder if they’re on top of this?

Regards,

——————————
“Sparkly” Steve Erbach – Green Bay, WI
Co-Chair, GPUG WI (Green Bay) Chapter
Blog: https://www.gpug.com/blogs/steve-erbach

 

 

 

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19. RE: Statement email follies

GPUG ALL STAR
Beat Bucher
Posted Apr 05, 2022 09:37 AM
Hi Steve,
I hope you’re doing well so far in those pandemic times… I came across this thread after searching for more past or current issues reported by users about using a common shared mailbox in GP to send out e-mails.
With the rise of problems affecting older GP versions (prior to 18.3) which don’t support Modern Auth by Microsoft and the retirement of TLS 1.0/1.1, I’ve more and more customers trying alternative options, like switching from EXO to MAPI, which IMHO is requiring a lot of work, especially when running GP off a Terminal Server platform, where users have to setup a mailbox profile in Outlook to GP to work. Not to mention other issues related with the use of Outlook, like Office updates which need to be handled by IT. One client that we recently had switched to MAPI called one day saying that GP would crash when trying to e-mail EFT remittance reports to about 120 vendors.. the process would run for about 5 min where you could see the counter at the bottom go all the way up to total number of documents to send out, count back down and when reaching 0 crash GP.
Turned out that GP couldn’t make the proper call to Outlook, which instead of answering properly the call, would come up with some message that Outlook was in need of applying updates (!!). This is the kind of problems that makes the MAPI call less reliable than the EXO mode, especially when the client doesn’t have a dedicated IT staff to care about their systems.
I’m wondering how Binary Stream’s eMailer is handling all of this, but my wild guess would be that it is managing all of this outside of GP, and might have integrated Modern Auth (with 2FA support) already before GP 18.3…
The issue that should be addressed by the change request for Microsoft is the support for the Microsoft Graph API to support common shared mailbox accounts.. which currently it isn’t.
I’ve been teaching clients and users that instead of using their personal account to login into Exchange (or Outlook) when prompted by GP, they should make use of a shared mailbox that would be accessible by all users. But that apparently is only supported properly when using the MAPI mode.
Thanks for you support and enjoy the spring.

——————————
Beat Bucher
Business Analyst, Dynamics GP SME
Montreal QC/Canada
@GP_Beat http://www.gp-geek.com
Montreal QC GPUG Chapter Leader
MBS MVP (2015-2018)
All-Star 2013
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