In the previous post, I showed my first experience with downloading the application. In this post, I will give some examples of setting it up.

First enter the url with &mode=mobile

https://myfakeaos.cloudax.dynamics.com/?cmp=usmf&mi=DefaultDashboard&mode=mobile

On the top right menu you will see Mobile app.

This will slide through the configurations pane.

Click on Add and create your first workspace.

I navigated to the form I want to record. I went into the On-hand inventory form.

Clicked on Select fields button and these orange + signs came up. Select the fields you want to display on the mobile device.

Click on the Done buttons. Then click on Publish workspace.

Refresh the mobile app.

This would have been really cool if it worked but I had a issue. It only displayed 1 item in the list.

The onhand form is very complicated and has a lot of dynamic features. Hiding and showing inventory dimension. So, I would recommend creating your own simple inventory on hand form which doesn’t have the complications of the standard form.

I did the exact same thing for the Released products and it worked fine.

This post I will explain how actions work. How to create a new sales order via Actions.

On the sales order click on Actions. Then add an action.

Click on the new sales order button and start recording your screen. I selected a few fields that I wanted to add.

Go to the mobile and refresh.

Lookups have to be linked too. This can be done by clicking on the field and then hit the properties.

Notice how you have to have an existing page. I ended up creating a customer page and linked the fields.

Date look up appear like so

This will sync the action back to the system. If there are any sync issues, just navigate to the Sync history.

You don’t get a detailed error message. You get sync failed due to an error. That is why I have to emphasis keep it simple.

AX7 uses blob storage for document handling and sometimes you may notice it errors due to Azure storage.

This is an example of the error you would get.

Error: Upload of “MyFile” failed. An error occurred writing to Azure storage.

On your development box search for the “Microsoft Azure Storage Emulator”

It should open up a command line window and start the emulator.

In your tray it will show up the Emulator Icon.

The emulator is part of the Azure SDK. It has a configuration file with the ports it uses.

Emulator reference on MSDN

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/gg433005.aspx

I recently downloaded the new Update 3 box for Dynamics for Operations which was on windows 2016. I installed Chrome and got this strange error.

ERR_SPDY_INADEQUATE_TRANSPORT_SECURITY

After some searching and trial and error. Here is my workaround/solution.

I used IISCrypto to disable SSL 2.0. Make sure to reboot afterwards.

These are a couple of links that helped me.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/835100aa-1996-4300-95aa-a322b49a145a/win2016srv-http-20-errspdyinadequatetransportsecurity?forum=windowsazuredevelopment

http://www.tecfused.com/2016/10/err_spdy_inadequate_transport_security-server-2016/

Don’t ask me why or what. This is a rough fix that worked for me. I am not sure if I broke anything else. I just wanted to use some chrome tools.

In this post, I will show how the export/import experience works. From the currently application release, it is an export/import task that has to be done manually.

You can export the workspace and it will dump an xml file. See below screenshot of the xml file. On the left you see the Export workspace button.

To import click on the … and Import button. Then just publish.

Over the last couple of months I posted about the Dynamics 365 for Operations mobile platform.

Part 1– Logging in

Part 2– Basic configuration

Part 3– Advanced configuration

Part 4– Export/Import

I intentionally say platform and not app. This is because it is somewhat a generic in nature. You can record a series of forms and actions to use as an app. The App behaves similar to the full browser application by focusing on workspace concept. You click on a workspace and drill through to menu items.

Search for a KB 3215650 that will allow you to deploy 4 recorded apps done by Microsoft. This hotfix includes the workspaces for Supply Chain Management listed below. More information on the wiki links below.

• Cost object overview - https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/cost-controlling-mobile-workspace/
• Inventory on-hand - https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/inventory-on-hand-mobile-workspace/
• Sales orders - https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/sales-orders-mobile-workspace/
• Vendor collaboration - https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/vendor-collaboration-mobile-workspace/

Focusing on the Inventory on-hand workspace. Below are some screenshots.

You get 4 workspaces that Microsoft provided. Drill into the Inventory workspace and you get one option

  You get the item list to search. The when you drill through you have basic information with some links. Notice the different action available to see availability on.

I had some labels missing here. Next time I will try to dive in deeper to find out more.

This was a nice find in the latest version of D365O. In workflow we can associate a hierarchy to a configuration. In pervious versions we where only allowed to select the one primary managerial hierarchy.

A slider will pop up which you can select a hierarchy.

In the assignments in AX 2012 we where only allowed to select the Managerial hierarchy.

In D365O we can select Configurable hierarchy.

Recently, I spent I bit of time on PowerApps. Below is a walk through of my findings.

Go to https://powerapps.microsoft.com and log in. This will take you through to the PowerApps dashboard. Here you can define your connection. This step requires that you authenticate to your D365O. Based on your email it will list all the D365O you have on your tenant.

You can then create a new Application now. Click on Get started under the Create an app menu.

First thing it comes up with is the connection. Select D365O and the Odata services will be listed. I chose to select the InventorySitesOnHand.

Wizard will default 3 pages.

• List
• Details
• Edit

You can change the layout and the fields easily. Just click on the page to change the layout. Click on the field to select or change the field.

You can save your application.

If you run it, it will give you a preview.

Download the App on your mobile

Now this below is from my personal android phone. PowerApps will list all the apps you have published.

This is the final result

I haven’t done formatting but this is how the details page looks like.

It is an online app. If you go offline and try to access the app. Then you will get an error.

Lastly, you can pin the app that was published.

When you pin it, it will go on your home screen.

There are a couple of posts which I found to be useful

https://dynamics3654operations.wordpress.com/2016/11/13/powerapps-for-dynamics-365-for-operations-part-1/

https://dynamics3654operations.wordpress.com/2016/11/24/inventoryonhand-a-first-powerapp-for-dynamics-365-for-operations-part-2/

With prior versions of SSIS, the you couldn’t save online authentication with OData connections. If you wanted to use it, you had to wrap the messages using c# code. Now with the latest SQL 2016 update there was a nice feature that sneaked under the radar.

The OData Connection Manager now supports five modes of authentication.

• Windows Authentication

• Basic Authentication (with username and password)

• Microsoft Dynamics AX Online (with username and password)

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (with username and password)

• Microsoft Online Services (with username and password)

Read more here on msdn https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/dn584133.aspx

This is what the interface looks like.

It will pop up with the sign in and will save it.

This is a very exciting release.

I was recently looking at different ways of analyzing the security in the AOT. I found an Addin that is in Visual Studio.

Click on the “View related objects and licenses for all roles”.

It takes about 5 minutes to put all the data together and export an Excel file.

You get two worksheets.

• License information – Shows the different security objects; Roles, Duties and Privileges. Showing the license type.
• View related objects – This is a detailed exploded view of the Roles, duties, privileges, resource (I.e. menu item)

Based on the second tab I was able to create a pivot table. This allows me to figure out what makes a particular license Enterprise.

The thing you have to keep in mind is that this is looking at the AOT. If you have made security changes in the front end, this Addin won’t recognize it.

If you want to review security from the front end then navigation to the Security configuration form. Then click on the View permissions.

You will get a similar list as the Excel sheet. You get the Role license type. In the grid you get the exploded view with the license type. You can sort on the License column and figure out what makes up the Enterprise license.

I have a few suggestions for Microsoft:

1. Can we have a simple export from the front end. Export the same Excel as the add in – I.e. exploded view for all security objects.

2. Add a new Excel worksheet to export the “User roles” - Users with their roles and showing the License type. Also add the field Enabled (active user or not).

3. Make these exploded view an actual table that gets updated periodically.

4. Create data entities for PowerBI content pack. This would allow the ERP administrators a dashboard to see things like

     a) Number of Active users by License type

     b) Drill through to Roles and Security objects

In this post I just wanted to highlight the event viewer logs on a developer box. Make good use of it – not just for web services but for most errors.

Below is a recently problem I was troubleshooting.

I was working on the Microsoft github integration project to do a proof of concept using odata. I had problems with the authentication. I was able to retrieve the token from Azure AD however the odata authentication piece failed with D365O.

I got this error “Microsoft.OData.Client.DataServiceClientException: Unauthorized” 

In debug I got down to this “Unknown user type” error.

So, after looking at the event viewer. Expand Applications and Service Logs > Microsoft > Dynamics > AX-IntegrationCommon > Operational

From the error I found that the tenant which is blurred was different. I had 2 Azure subscription.

All I had to do what runt he Admin Provisioning tool against the tenant I wanted to do the integration with. Then all worked fine.

Another way I could have done this troubleshooting is by using Fiddler. Maybe in the next blog.

Reference:

• https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/dynamics-ax-7-services-technical-concepts-guide/
• https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/odata-in-dynamics-ax-7/
• https://github.com/Microsoft/Dynamics-AX-Integration

In this post I will explain using POSTMAN but it really doesn’t matter what tool you use (SOAPUI is another common tool). The main point I am trying to make is how to put the authentication piece together so you can start messaging to/from the web service.

Download POSTMAN from their site https://www.getpostman.com/

In Azure AD register the application. For more info see previous post I wrote http://dynamicsnavax.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/azure-ad-in-new-portal.html

For POSTMAN, you need to enter the redirect. POSTMAN would tell you this later when you try to get a token.

Redirect URL: https://www.getpostman.com/oauth2/callback

Open up POSTMAN and enter your URL you want to send a request to. Click on the bright orange button “Get New Access Token”

This dialog will pop up. It will ask for a bit of info:

1. Auth URL – You can enter the following. Replace the tenant and the resource url https://login.windows.net/mytenant.onmicrosoft.com/oauth2/authorize?resource=https%3A%2F%notarealurl1adaos.cloudax.dynamics.com
   
2. Access Token URL – same thing replace the tenant and the resource url – https://login.windows.net/mytenant.onmicrosoft.com/oauth2/token?resource=https%3A%2F%notarealurl1adaos.cloudax.dynamics.com
3. Client ID – Get the Application ID from Azure 2 screenshots above. Mine starts with b87bf*****

When you click on the request, it will pop up with the login window. If you supply a Client Secret key it won’t.

You should get a response and then you can click on “Use Token” button. It will insert it into the header of the message.

You can now enter your parameters if you wish. Nice interface to play with. It will build up your URL for you. Then click on Send button.

Result should show in the body.

This link shows the mobile workspaces that have been released. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/operations/dev-itpro/mobile-apps/mobile-workspaces-released

However, I haven’t found the recent changes on the mobile app side. So, I decided to take a look my self.

A few new features have been added to the mobile app since the last update.

Now you can change company and sync history has been renamed to Notifications.

Shows the list of companies. Stops if you there are unsynced changes.

Regarding the notifications (previously sync history), it is now a lot more user friendly. You can drill through to show the record in question. Swipe to expose the delete button.

Next time I will show a bit of the expense app.

In this post we will have a quick look at the Expenses workspace on the Dynamics 365 for Operations Mobile application.

I used a really small mobile to do my screen capture and some of the UI doesn’t look great.

First screen will give you an option to Capture a receipt (image) or go straight into the Quick expense entry form.

Allows you to take a picture or choose from your device.

Next screen will allow you select a category.

Next screen is the actual form where you enter the details. Errors and warnings show at the top.

It is early stages and I am sure there is more features to come.

Last year I did a plug for a colleague who had developed this super nice solution which you can use to expose your AIF SOAP services as RESTful services. http://dynamicsnavax.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/expose-ax-2012-aif-services-soap-as.html

Fabio has done a great job in sharing a great piece of work and also documenting it really well. What is missing is to take it to the next level.

So, in a series of posts, I will show how to deploy this to Azure via Azure Api App and communicate with your on premise AOS.

There are many benefits to this solution in the cloud

• Integration with Azure Logic Apps – this uses swagger and Logic Apps will work really nicely
• Expose for 3rd parties to securely integrate with your AX solution
• No need setting up complicated IIS/Firewalls/DMZ servers etc.
• Use Azure Authentication without a need to build anything
• Scale easily with the cloud
• Allows you to build mobile apps

Continuation from previous post. In this post I will show how  publish your solution to Azure.

I assume you have followed the instruction from the GitHub wiki to download and configure.

https://github.com/ffilardi/AxaptaAPI/wiki

Now that you have done that. Lets deploy.

Create a new Api App. You might have to search for it if its not available on the menu.

Give it a name and select a Resource Group. Obviously pick a data centre location that is close to your AOS. If I am not sure, I like to use this site to find the closest with the lowest latency.

http://www.azurespeed.com/

Now you have an empty Api App. Grab the Publish file by clicking the “Get publish profiles”. This is not necessary but if you have other developers who don’t have access but you want them to publish. This one of the ways.

In Visual Studio right click on your project and click Publish.

Follow the wizard. You can sign in and select the Azure resource to deploy it to. Otherwise, use the publish file to import and publish (doesn’t require you to sign in).

Once its deployed. Just navigate to the swagger URL. Should look like this

https://myapiapp.azurewebsites.net/swagger

Last post showed how to publish your solution to Azure. This post will show you where to modify the the application settings. In visual studio you would be modifying the web config file. In the cloud you will modify the Application settings.

Find your Api App. Click on Application settings. Scroll down to App settings.

Lets set up the authentication in this post. You should always secure your application and never leave it exposed out to the web.

Click on Authentication menu and turn it on. In the drop down, select Azure Active Directory. In the Authentication providers click on Azure Active Directory to start configuring it.

Select the Express mode. This will create an web App registration.

Once authentication is configured. Lets set up a native Application registration. This step is only required if you are trying to communicate to the web service via a desktop applications, mobile application, third party tools to access your web services.

More information on application permissions and authentication on the Microsoft article.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-au/azure/active-directory/develop/active-directory-authentication-scenarios

Navigate the the Active directory menu and click on Application permissions. You will see the “Web app/API” application registration. We will create a Native application registration.

When creating it you will be asked to enter a redirect URI. Enter a valid uri.

Click on the Native application registration and click on Required permissions. Add the Web App registration and Grant permissions (button at the top).

When you are adding it. You will have to search for it. It wont show up on the list automatically.

We are done.

Now lets test it by navigating to the swagger url. You will be asked to log in and also accept permissions.

There is a test service you can run to check that it has recognised you.

This is the final post of this series.

Web Api App for AX 2012 to Azure–Intro

Deploy a Web Api App for AX 2012 to Azure–part 1

Application settings - Web Api App for AX 2012 to Azure-part 2

Authentication - Web Api App for AX 2012 to Azure-part 3

Hybrid connection - Web Api App for AX 2012 to Azure-part 4 (this one)

In this post we will set up a Hybrid Connection. This is basically a listener that sits on your on-premise server. It will expose internal port to Azure. More information on Hybrid connection on Microsoft’s site.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/biztalk-services/integration-hybrid-connection-overview

In your Api App, click on Networking. Then click on “Configure your hybrid connection endpoints”.

First download the connection manager. Install this on your on-premise server that you want to install the listener.

You don’t have to run the connection manager just yet. Set up the hybrid connection by clicking on the “Add hybrid connection”

Click on the “Create new hybrid connection”

Enter the required detail. Host is the AOS server name. The port is the net tcp port number.

If unsure what port to enter. Have a look at the net.tcp address in the wsdl or inside the web config file.

Now lets run the Hybrid connection Manager you installed a few steps earlier. Click on “Configure another Hybrid Connection”. It will ask you to log in. Once logged in, you can seelect an existing connection. This is what you created in the portal. Click on Save and you should see a green “Connected” status next to it. The web portal should show the same.

That is it. Give it a test by navigating to the swagger URL. The URL is just the Api App url suffixed with swagger. eg.

https://axaptaapi1.azurewebsites.net/swagger

I am very happy to say Daxeam Mobile is now available on Apple App store and Google Play Store. Daxeam Mobile fully working on both Dynamics 2012 and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise Edition.

Daxeam is an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solution available exclusively for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise Edition. The Daxeam solution extends the functionality of AX, delivering integration to EAM across Projects, Inventory, Finance and Fixed Assets.

Some key items to note about the Mobile solution:

• Daxeam Mobile is an application built from the ground up to work with the Daxeam
• Login is managed security via Azure Active Directory
• Works for both AX2012 and D365O
• Offline capable – has sophisticated sync capabilities to download your data locally and syncs back up when connection is available
• Features available
• Asset hierarchy
• Asset management such as meter updates, view attributes, structures and related history
• Work order management such as creating, editing, status updates, registering hours, registering items, executing your checks and many more
• Observation management such as creating, editing
• Taking pictures
• Searching and Barcode scanning