SteadyCode entered its sixth year of business this fall. Some customers have been upgrading or making changes to projects written long ago. It’s been a while since I’ve written a post and I thought I’d take a few minutes to share.

This morning, when upgrading a custom program that imports Excel spreadsheets to Microsoft Dynamics SL 2018, CU2, my customer wondered when I had originally written it. We found comments in a SQL Script that mentioned July 3, 2001. I believe all the updates to it were required by database schema changes and referencing the next version of the SL DLLs. Eighteen years of use with an occasional upgrade now and then is a pretty good track record and, considering the time saved by several accountants over the years, was an excellent investment.

This was actually the third such incident in the past month. Another customer requested adjustment for an integration to an external system, which runs in the background as a service. They had changed the external system three times. The first external system lasted less than two years, the second for twelve years, and this fall they are switching to a third. All the external systems created XML files that the service imports to Dynamics SL.

The other example was the Sovos Sales Tax Adapter for Dynamics SL. I originally wrote it for Solomon IV, version 4.21. I was working on the original version on Sept. 11, 2001 when Ironware closed their office for the rest of the day.

A few years later Ironware replaced the original Java integration with a .Net version and a few years after that sold it to ADP, which later spun it off to Sovos. They own it, but I still provide support and upgrade it for customers. Someone asked about a competitor to Avalera’s integration a couple weeks ago and I suggested they consider Sovos.

I recommend using out-of-the-box integrations when they’re available and meet the requirements. While custom integrations are initially more expensive, they often keep working with little modification for years, even decades. Some have reduced days of work to a few seconds, eliminating tedious tasks. Others have provided integrity to chaotic home-grown systems. We’re looking forward to helping you streamline and organize your business in resilient ways that will let you reap rewards for years to come.