December 10, 2011 in Blog by Amer

Enterprise Portal is Not Working on Dynamics AX 2012 Hyper-V Image

If you ever started working on the image downloaded from the Microsoft PartnerSource of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, you might face a trouble while trying to explore Role Centers or Enterprise Portals.

This error is due to the configuration setup in the AX2012 image that let’s DNS points to contoso.com domain. What has to be done is to redirect that domain to the current machine (which is the same virtual machine you’re using).

To do so you must add a loop back IP to your” Hosts” file. You can think of that files a Rolodex for your computer. Its where a computer looks first to translate the URL of a website into a numerical IP address that it can actually use. You can find the “Hosts” file in: “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\Hosts”.

To fix the issue, open the Hosts file a notepad and add this line to the end of the file:

127.0.0.1       dynamicsax.contoso.com

In the beginning, you might encounter the below error… but it will be fixed with “refresh”:

November 29, 2010 in Blog by Amer

Tracing Role Center KPIs

If you wanted to know where the KPIs in Dynamics AX 2009 are getting its values from, then you might need to have a look at this document:

• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009: Tracing Role Center KPIs

This documents describes in detailes how to trace those values in Visual Studio.

Have fun!

October 16, 2010 in Blog by Amer

Two Enterprise Portals on the Same Machine for Two AOS’s

I had an issue where I needed to install a new Enterprise Portal on a server that has two AOS’s: TEST and DEVELOPMENT.
The TEST AOS has already an Enterprise Portal installed and configured. The requirement was to install an Enterprise Portal also for the DEVELOPMENT AOS.
When I successfully completed the installation, I figured out that the Websites form (in Administration –> Setup –> Internet –> Enterprise Portal) in TEST contains two websites! The old and the new one. I tried to delete the new website from this form and I also added an entry in the same form on the DEVELOPMENT environment. But, for some reason the EP was showing incorrect results like this:

I solved the issue by letting the .NET Business Connector Configuration points to the DEVELOPMENT environment! Before that, I have un-installed that new EP.

Then I was able to deploy the EP on the DEVELOPMENT environment :).

October 14, 2010 in Blog by Amer

Failed to Connect to the Local Windows Database Engine while Running SharePoint Configuration Wizard

I had a problem while running the SharePoint Configuration Wizard after installing WSS 3.0 SP2 that says:

Failed to connect to the configuration database.
An exception of type System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Access to module dbo.proc_getObjectsByClass is blocked because the signature is not valid.
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Access to module dbo.proc_getObjectsByClass is blocked because the signature is not valid.
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection)
.......

As it looks clear from the error, the wizard simply fails to connect to the database. (The database was installed as Express edition on the local machine and the OS was Windows Server 2008 R2.) After lots of tries to uninstall WSS 3.0 and reinstall it again and again… I have done the following:

1. Un-installed Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition (from Programs and Features)
2. Downloaded Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Edition (http://www.microsoft.com/express/database/) and then installed it
3. Installed WSS 3.0 SP2 as farm installation
4. After the installation has finished, I got the SharePoint Configuration Wizard where I was able to choose the local database that I have just installed..

The wizard then ran just fine. Hope it will with you as well

October 13, 2010 in Blog by Amer

Two Enterprise Portals on the Same Machine for Two AOS’s

I had an issue where I needed to install a new Enterprise Portal on a server that has two AOS’s: TEST and DEVELOPMENT.
The TEST AOS has already an Enterprise Portal installed and configured. The requirement was to install an Enterprise Portal also for the DEVELOPMENT AOS.
When I successfully completed the installation, I figured out that the Websites form (in Administration –> Setup –> Internet –> Enterprise Portal) in TEST contains two websites! The old and the new one. I tried to delete the new website from this form and I also added an entry in the same form on the DEVELOPMENT environment. But, for some reason the EP was showing incorrect results like this:

I solved the issue by letting the .NET Business Connector Configuration points to the DEVELOPMENT environment! Before that, I have un-installed that new EP.

Then I was able to deploy the EP on the DEVELOPMENT environment :).

July 20, 2010 in Blog by Amer

Enterprise Portal “Generate Proxies” Form: ClrObject static method invocation error.

I have examined an error while trying to re-generate the proxies classes that are used in the Enterprise Portal.

When I traced the code, I discovered that this tool is actually updating .NET proxies classes based on the EP installation physical path. For some reason, this tool was not able to get that path.. the generated path was: “” (empty string).

What I did is that I got the physical path of the proxy classes, and changed the code where it tries to get that path and fixed it. This is done in ClassesSysEPDeploymentcreateDevWebsiteProxyDir.

This code shows what I did:

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public static client str createDevWebsiteProxyDir()
{
    #AOT
 
    Microsoft.Dynamics.Framework.Deployment.Portal.EPSharepointAdmin epSharepointAdmin;
    EPGlobalParameters epGlobalParam;
    str dir;
 
    select firstonly epGlobalParam;
 
    if(!epGlobalParam.DevelopmentSiteId)
        // UA!No development web site.
        throw error('@SYS108771');
 
    epSharepointAdmin = new Microsoft.Dynamics.Framework.Deployment.Portal.EPSharepointAdmin();
 
    /*comment from here
    dir = epSharepointAdmin.GetAppCodeDirectoryFromSiteId(guid2str(epGlobalParam.DevelopmentSiteId));
    comment to here*/
 
    //add this line of code (My installation was on this path)
    dir = "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\app_code";
    //In Dynamics AX VPC1, the installation is on this path <>
    dir = "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\sharepoint80\App_Code";

Here is where the EP proxies classes to be generated and hence used by the Dynamics AX EP.

By this, the tool just worked fine :).

May 18, 2010 in Blog by Amer

An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the analysis server.

One of the few issues in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 that I always blaming Microsoft for not giving it in a proper way is: installing, configuring and administrating the EP (with all its related components line the SSRS, SSAS, IIS and WSS/MOSS). A great feature like this shouldn’t be left away like this Steve :)… we are dying, customers are blaiming, and partners are loosing money!

I had one issue in the last few days when I “re-installed” the EP, SSRS and SSAS then my client played with the environment and destroyed the installation. The environment was like the following:

• SQL Server Reporting Services database is installed on another machine (Database server) than the windows service of SSRS (web server).
• I had to use the Kerberos authentication to manage this distributed scenario

After completing the installtion of EP, SSRS and SSAS, configuring them and processing the cubes I had this error: “An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the analysis server.”

After invistigations, I discovered that the ODC file is not deployed to the EP. (ODC file is a file used to set the connnection string between the EP WSS and the Analysis Services.) You could check the ODC files by going to: Dynamics AX Enterprise Portal –> Site settings –> Site Administration –> Site Libraries and Lists –> Customize “Data connections” and then in the header area click Data Connections in the path: EP Site –> Data Connections –> Settings.

You could deploy the ODC file from within Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 desktop client by clicking the Delpoye ODC Files button in the OLAP Administration form (Administration –> Setup –> Business analysis –> OLAP –> OLAP Administration).

But sometimes you will not be able to upload this file, and you will get an error when trying to connect to SQL and you have to check the Windows Event Log to follow that error up.

If so, then you have to maually create/upload the ODC file(s). A great post was written regarding the same issue on how you upload those ODC files specifically for Dynamics AX 2009 cubes. How to manually deploy ODC Files to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Enterprise Portal.

In this post shortly the writer gives those ODC files so you could:

1. download them,
2. change the connection string to match yours and then
3. deploy them to your environment

Have fun :).