Who says Dynamics GP has to be boring? Add a gesture interface for a new dimension in business intelligence.

Why should games developers have all the fun?

If you’re working on a business application, the idea of adding a Kinect interface might not spring immediately to mind, but Jivtesh Singh has come up with an example of using it to control a Microsoft Dynamics GP app.

If you’re unfamiliar with Dynamics GP, it’s a set of mid-market business accounting software formerly known as Great Plains prior to being bought by Microsoft, and along with the other Dynamics products, is not usually known for its wow gosh exciting environment.

Singh is a Dynamics MVP (Most Valued Professional), and he says on his blog that he was keen to program with Kinect, and when he saw how the Business Analyzer that can be used with Dynamics GP 2010 lets you add KPIs, charts and graphs to Dynamics' personal dashboards, he came up with the idea of an app to let people navigate Business Analyzer with their gestures.

I think you need to be a particularly evangelical Dynamics developer to see a relationship like this, but Singh went ahead and you can see the results in the video below. Singh’s app tracks four gestures and sends commands to Business Analyzer to navigate through the reports, with left and right swipes being used to move forward and backward through the graphs, and expand and contract gestures for zoom in and out.

You can watch a video of it in action below:

As a side benefit, Jivtesh says he lost a bit of weight while coding for this, so it’s win win really.

If you’re inspired, the Kinect SDK is available at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/kinectsdk/, and the Kinect Toolbox is available at http://kinecttoolbox.codeplex.com/.

Related articles

All About Kinect

Getting started with Microsoft Kinect SDK

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