Great news! GP 2018 R2 was released today, October 2, 2018. There are tons of posts on the official Dynamics GP blog about the features through their feature of the day series.

I downloaded and installed it on my Surface Go, so I could try it on this device as well as check out the new features. After I was done, I went through the Intelligent Cloud setup to see how it looked.

Getting Started

First off, log into Dynamics GP 2018 R2. If the home page isn't defaulting to Intelligent Cloud Insights, click on that to get started. Scroll down to the very bottom and click on Try It Out. This will bring up a page like this:

New Intelligent Cloud window in GP 2018.

Scroll down to the bottom of this page, and enter credentials for the tenant to connect to. Honestly, I don't know what the phone number has to do with it, but it requires it.

Prompt for a phone number and work email.

If an account already exists in Azure/Office 365, users will be prompted with something like this.

Message “You have an account with us”.

Next up is a warning that the admin may assume control over the account and data.

Warning about using an organizational account and terms & conditions stuff.

I did get a script error, but I clicked on Yes to continue running scripts on the page and it continued just fine. YMMV…

Script errors

It feels like I've already logged in at this point, but all I've done is click through a variety of warnings. At this point it wants me to log in. I am still inside Dynamics GP at this point, by the way.

The login window inside Dynamics GP prompted me to select an account.

Finally, it appeared to be doing something!

The setup window shows some progress

Next up, since I don't have an actual Business Central tenant, it asks me to set up a trial. I clicked on Get Started to continue.

Prompt to create a trial for Business Central

Intelligent Cloud Setup

Now in a regular browser, I log into my O365 tenant and Dynamics 365. I go to Setup & Extensions, scroll to the bottom and select Set up Intelligent Cloud.

This is the bare minimum I have to do, not go through any other trial setup, as I’m not setting up "Business Central" itself.

Setup & Extensions window in Business Central

In the Intelligent Cloud Setup, accept the terms and click next.

Intelligent Cloud Setup window and privacy notice

In this next screen, select which product I am planning on replicating from.

Intelligent Cloud Setup choose a product window.

The first time here, leave the Integration Runtime Service field blank, it will bring me to the subsequent screen to install that.

Intelligent Cloud Setup prompted me for my SQL Server information.

In the instructions phase, I was given a link to download the Self-Hosted Integration Runtime file. The next section will run through that. I left this open as I will need the Authentication Key in my installation.

Intelligent Cloud setup prompted me to install the integration runtime service.

Integration Runtime Installation

Walk through the wizard from here to install the runtime. In this part, I skipped some screens as it was pretty straightforward "next, next, next" type of stuff.

Integration Runtime installation

I did receive a warning - about sleep mode. It's a laptop, not a server so when installing this in a regular server environment, users likely won't get this message.

Integration Runtime warning about sleep mode on my computer.

Copy the Authentication Key from the browser setup and paste it in should result in a checkmark.

Registration of the Integration Runtime window.

Next up I have the option to rename the Node name. I can have up to 4 nodes connected to 1 runtime service. I made up a name to test this and continued.

Node name setup in the integration runtime setup.

At this point, I returned to my browser to continue but got a failure message. My mistake? I put the COMPANY db in the connection string, not the SYSTEM db, which is DYNAMICS in my case.

Error: “Failed to enable your replication.”

Once I fixed the connection string, all was fine. The next screen shows me the companies I have (in my case, a simple install with only one company at the moment).

Intelligent Cloud setup showing my companies that I could replicate.

Next is the schedule. In my case, I don't want to activate a schedule yet since this is a laptop, not a server. Oddly enough, not pictured, I HAVE to put in a time of day even if I have Activate Schedule turned off.

Scheduling data replication window

After filling in a time of day (and not activating), I clicked Next.

End of the wizard.

That's it!

To see the data, I now needed to go to the Gears icon at the top of the D365 window and select Fabrikam (TWO) as my company to continue. I was logged into another company when setting this up but it creates a company for each company I replicate.

The D365 wizard prompts me to run through some settings for my "company" but I let the default settings apply and turned off the need to sync with a bank etc., and continued through.

Managing Replication

The one flaw in my plan is not setting up a schedule and I couldn't find where to manage replication. It's well hidden: I had to search for Intelligent Cloud Management in D365.

A status window showing the completion of the first replication.

Under the Actions button, there are several actions including Run Replication Now. I did that and now look at this, I've got some data! Ah, everyone's favourite 100XLG Green Phone! Love it!

A window showing my GP data in Business Central.

That's it for now. It looks like I've got a lot of inventory of 128 SDRAM so I had better get "selling"!