Custom Links – Adding Custom Links for Employees

As part of a Custom Link blog series (which can be found here), we will discuss adding custom links to specific areas in Dynamics GP.

Creating Custom Links for Employees

Custom Links for Employees can be pretty helpful, indeed! We can link directly to folders holding employee documents or even open an employee photo!
Let’s take a look at this together!

In an earlier post I walked through an overview of Custom Links – what they are, and how to access the setup – that post can be found here.

Employee Custom Link Background Info

Employee Custom Links are based on the employee’s primary address type only!

The PRIMARY address type is the address ID that is set on the Employee Maintenance window. In my example below, my Address ID is called PRIMARY but that can be called anything, as long as it is selected on this window, it is considered the primary address type.

Each Address ID and Employee ID combination has a setup window called Internet Information (the blue globe to the right of the word Primary in the screenshot below).

The Internet Information window holds the data used for the custom links.

Creating Employee Custom Links

The information stored in the Internet Information window can be accessed as the custom link, providing the data is stored on the address ID that is designated as the Primary Address Type.
I am going to just setup a link to the employees Twitter account. Maybe not very practical but this will give us a simple example to use… there are so many things we could link to: Websites, Files, Employee Photos, and more!
In my Internet Information window for my employee and address ID combination, I am settings up the URL to my twitter account. Believe it or not, more and more organizations use Twitter and Facebook as ways to ‘keep tabs’ on their employees – so maybe this isn’t a bad example after all 🙂

Take note that I also added a local file in the Image field. I will also create a custom link to open the employee photo.
Let’s open the Custom Link window and create a new Custom Link. This can be found Administration/Setup/Company/Custom Links

After selecting the Employee Prompt, I gave it a label – for the first one, calling it Twitter makes sense. Then I select Primary for my address Type (only option) and then lastly, pick the field I want to link to – this field is in the Internet Information window above. I selected Home Page because that is where I stored the link to my twitter account.
After hitting save, now I see the link for Twitter anywhere I have the employee drill down.

Now all I have to do is click on the Twitter link and it will automatically open up the URL I saved for this employee! HOW COOL IS THAT!!!!???!!!
OH, see employee photo and the others? I have a few custom links for each employee – the photo is pretty self explanatory and the example is shown in the Internet Information window above – so all I have to do is click on ‘Employee Photo’ and now I will see their photo we have on file.
What about the Call and Chat links? More on that in a follow up blog – refer back to the main series page here to check out how to use Skype for Business directly from within GP!
Do you have any Custom Link examples for Employees? Share them in the comments below!
Be sure to check out the series main page for links and examples of creating custom links for other areas of Dynamics GP!
Thanks for reading!
Shawn