Here’s another pet peeve of mine when it comes to Integration Manager: changing the default IM database on each installation. Like my previous post on how to register IM quickly, here’s another tip on using the .ini file settings to your advantage to roll out workstation installs quickly and painlessly.

Default IM database

When you first install Integration Manager, this is what the default IM database path may resemble. A show of hands: how many of you have install instructions that walk you through manually changing this on every workstation install? Yes, I thought so…

So why does Integration Manager show my default database as something different? TIP: go to Help - About Integration Manager to find this screen. It will always tell you where the current IM database is, regardless of the settings above. Don’t be fooled by looking in Options!

How do I do that?

There is a file in the Integration Manager install directory - typically here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics\Integration Manager 14 - and the file is called “Microsoft.Dynamics.GP.IntegrationManager.ini”.

Open that file up, and right underneath the [IMBaseProvider] tag, put a line in like this: “DBPath=” and the pathname to your IM db file and the filename. Next time you launch Integration Manager, it will be the default IM database, without changing the setting in Options!

But wait, my “Run Integration” list doesn’t show my integrations!

In my testing with GP 2015 and Integration Manager for GP 2015, this worked without doing anything else. However, I know in the past, I’ve also had to create an “IMRun.ini” file for the IMRun shortcut to show the proper integrations from the database.

If you run into that on an older version, try the following:

• Copy the Microsoft.Dynamics.GP.IntegrationManager.ini from above
• Rename the copied file Microsoft.Dynamics.GP.IntegrationManager.**IMRun.**ini

Now you have 2 .ini files, one for the IM process, and one for the IMRun process.