Confirmed: 8 year old bug in eConnect Requester SOP Transaction trigger

Last week I wrote about an issue where eConnect Requester didn't seem to properly capture inserted SOP Transactions.

At that time, I was able to work around it for one task that I was working on, but while working on the next part of the project, the same issue with eConnect Requester came up again, preventing me from continuing, yet again.

So I finally dug into the eConnect Requester SOP10100 Insert Trigger and found what appears to be an obvious bug that must be at least 8 years old.  The problem exists in GP 2015, 2013, and 2010, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's in GP 10 and earlier versions of eConnect.

Clearly the Insert "SO_Trans" record in eConnect Requester was never tested.  As in never QA tested, and never subsequently tested in the last 8+ years.  I guess if the bug has been around this long, nobody noticed, or nobody cared, and the few dozen people who use eConnect Requester just worked around it without questioning why it doesn't work.

Unfortunately, I'm stuck trying to clean up a 10 year old integration that uses the Requester extensively, with MSMQ no less, and so I will have to figure out a way to deal with this bug.

So let's look at where the developer of the trigger went awry, and why the Sales Transaction Insert trigger therefore doesn't work.

First, when you enable the Sales_Transaction "SO_Trans" Insert Trigger, eConnect Requester creates a trigger on the SOP10100 table. So far, so good.

And if you look at that trigger, it has a bunch of SQL in it that looks impressive, and gives you the impression that it might actually do something.  All fancy with a cursor, looping through the inserted records.

But if you enter a SOP transaction in Dynamics GP, the eConnect_Out table will remain empty.  Nada.

If you are feeling particularly adventurous and have lots of free time on your hands, you may wonder:  Why isn't it working?  (Or you could ignore it like everyone else apparently has)

You could then fire up SQL Server Profiler and run a trace, including the SP:StmtStarting or SP:StmtCompleted events to capture the trigger activity.

And the SQL Profiler activity will show that the trigger is indeed firing, the cursor is fetching, and all sorts of fun is definitely occurring.

But the eConnect_Out table remains empty.

So, since we know the trigger is firing, that tells us that there is some condition that is causing the trigger script to ignore the inserted SOP record.

After thinking about it for a few seconds, it dawned on me, and I bet that I knew why.

So why would an Insert trigger on the SOP10100 table not capture a record when a SOP transaction is saved?

Do you know?  Try and guess.

Well, if you've ever gone spelunking into the bowels of the SOP tables during entry of a SOP transaction, you may know that when you start to enter a SOP transaction, as soon as the Document Number (SOPNUMBE) is displayed in the Sales Transaction Entry window, a placeholder record is inserted into SOP10100.

What does this placeholder record look like?  It looks like a dummy record with a lot of blank values.

In this example, I show the customer number and Dex Row ID first, as those are important.

So now we have a placeholder record that sits there, but it's clearly incomplete.  That record only gets updated when you click Save on the Sales Transaction Entry window.

You will want to notice two things about this record.  First, the CUSTNMBR field now has a value.  Second, the Dex Row ID value is the same as before.  

Why is the Dex Row ID value important?  If it is the same value, that tells us that the record was subsequently updated, and not deleted and re-inserted.

Do you see where this is going?

Let's jump back to the SOP10100 Insert Trigger script, and look a little closer at the SQL.

And there is the fatal flaw.

The developer of the trigger decided to key off of the Customer Number, indicating that the value was required in order for the transaction to be written to eConnect_Out.  Makes sense.

But as we saw before, when the record is Inserted into SOP10100, the CUSTNMBR field is blank, because the record is only a placeholder field--GP doesn't yet have a customer number value when it inserts that record.

But, you might think, the customer number value is eventually inserted into SOP10100, right?

Technically, no.

As we saw earlier, the Dex Row ID doesn't change for the placeholder record, telling us that an Update statement is used to add the customer number value--not an Insert statement.  And an Insert trigger does not fire when a record is updated.

Because of the way that GP uses placeholder records in SOP10100, and because of the way that the SO_Trans trigger is written, the eConnect Requester SOP10100 Insert trigger will never actually do anything, and will never insert a record into the eConnect_Out table.

Ugh.

So if you are another poor soul who must face this reality, what are your options?

One option appears to be to use the eConnect Requester Sales_Transaction Line trigger instead.

Depending on your specific requirements, this may work, as it will at least allow you to know that a new Sales Transaction was entered.

There is a very slim chance that you might be able to use the eConnect Requester Update trigger for SOP10100, but that is unlikely, as any update to an existing SOP transaction will write a record to eConnect_Out, and you would have to sort out which ones you need to deal with.

For now, I'm going to try the Line trigger on SOP10200 and see if that will work, and hope that there aren't any downsides or side effects.

Happy coding.