How to configure ARM(Azure Resource Manager) before deploying your Dynamics 365 for Operations environment

Greetings!

Since August 2016 - Platform 2 Update, for deploying any new Dynamics 365 for Operations environment, configuring ARM is a pre-requisite. Through this article, I want to share my experience and few tips/troubleshooting steps which I had come across while configuring ARM

What is ARM?

ARM (Azure Resource Manager) groups the resources required for your Dynamics 365 for Operations instance in the cloud-based Azure OS.

Resources can be your:

a. Dynamics 365 for Operations Virtual Machines (DEMO, SANDBOX, DEVTEST)

b. Storage Accounts

c. Virtual networks

d. Databases

e. 3rd party Services

Azure Resource Manager enables you to work with the resources in your solution as a group. 

We can use a template for deployment and that template can work for different environments such as testing, staging, and production. 

To know, more about the benefits of ARM read here - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-group-overview

Let's now talk about how to configure ARM before deploying a new Dynamics 365 for operations environment.

So, once you are in your LCS (LifeCycle Services) page, before deploying your environment, you will need to set up Azure subscription, so click on Microsoft Azure Settings

Once you click on Microsoft Azure Settings, you will see the below page where you need to Authorize the tenant administrator of the organization, access to Dynamics 365 for operations application. For this, you will need to click the Authorize Link under the Organizational list group.

A new window gets opened as shown below where you have to enable Dynamics Deployment Services.

On pressing the Accept button, this grants access for Dynamics Deployment Services into your Azure Active Directory. Go back to the previous page and under Organization list settings and click again on Authorize. Refresh the browser and you will see the Authorization status as Authorization complete, as shown below:

Tip - At times, I have seen you have to click on the Authorize button multiple times to get the status as "Authorization complete"

Go back to Azure Connectors and click - Add

Enter any name and your Azure Subscription ID

Enable Configure to use Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and change the Azure subscription AAD Tenant Domain

Tip - You have to select Dynamics Deployment Services - Contributor and then click on Next button, failing to do so will not perform the validation

For the next step, that is to provide authorization, you will need to either:

a. Download and upload the Management Certificate, OR

b. Go to Access Control Panel (IAM) in your Azure portal and ensure that the tenant which you are using is added as part of contributor role in AAD

For Option a, that is uploading the management certificate, you will need to log into your Classic Azure Portal, to upload the certificate

For Option b, you can do this by launching the New Azure portal and then add the tenant user to the subscription as a Contributor.

Go to More Services > Subscriptions, then select your subscription, and click on Access Control (IAM), then press the (Add) button

Once the above steps are completed, when you go back to your Azure settings page in LCS, Make sure, that ARM enabled is checked for your subscription. Now, you are ready to setup your Azure region and proceed with deploying the environment

Patch up your Dynamics 365 for Operations Servers: Immediate Maintenance required in response to WannaCrypt ransomware

Greetings!

I got half a dozen email since yesterday from Microsoft as I have few Dynamics AX 2012 R3 and few Dynamics 365 for Operations VM running under different subscriptions.

As most of you are aware by now about WannaCrypt virus, Microsoft suggests to patch our Dynamics 365 for Operations VM's at the earliest. Below is an extract of the email form Microsoft

Note: If you do not have any Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations or Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 environments deployed in your own Azure subscriptions, you can ignore this mail.

In response to the recent global WannaCrypt ransomware attack, we recommend all Azure customers that have Dynamics 365 for Operations or Dynamics AX 2012 environments deployed in your own Azure subscriptions, to take the steps called out in the WannaCrypt Attacks: Guidance for Azure Customers blog post. This applies to environments in your subscription like demo and dev environments. Environments managed by Microsoft are already being proactively handled by us. 

Please take the above steps immediately to run a secure infrastructure and to protect your organization from attacks like these today and in the future.

Sincerely, 

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations service team

The new wiki or documentation link for Microsoft dynamics 365 for Operations

Greetings,

Microsoft is now replacing the existing wiki with this new wiki link for Dynamics 365 for Operations.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/operations/

Dynamics 365 for Operations Platform Update 6

Greetings,

Microsoft has now released Platform Update 6 for Dynamics 365 for Operations.

To read about the latest and what's new in Update 6, and how to deploy in your environment, have a look at the below links:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/4021254

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/operations/dev-itpro/get-started/whats-new-changed

Dynamics 365 for Operations not supported on Firefox browser 51.0.1

Just found that Dynamics 365 for operations doesn't render on the latest Firefox browser.

Dynamics 365 for Operations - Exciting Announcement regarding On-Premise Deployment

Greetings!

Wanted to share this exciting news which many customers were looking forward to - Having an on-premise deployment of Dynamics 365 for Operations - aka Dynamics AX 7

Sri Srinivasan, GM for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations, has announced this in the community forums

https://community.dynamics.com/b/msftdynamicsblog/archive/2017/02/23/the-right-cloud-option-for-your-business

Dynamics 365 for Operations - Troubleshooting HTTP 500 HttpCompileException Error

Dear Friends,

Hope you had a great start to the New Year! :-)

I'm excited and pumped up as I unlearn and learn more about Dynamics 365 for Operations. Recently, on one of my D365 Dev VM, I encountered the below HTTP 500 error after a successful VS Build.

No longer, I was able to browse the url. 

Error:

Troubleshooting:

Initially, I thought it was related to my custom model, so I deleted that from the packages directory, did an iisreset, stopped and started D365 services, SQL Services, restarted the whole box, but no luck.

Event Log Details:

Next, I dig a little bit into the event log, to find more about the errors logged there and i found this below message log - error CS1002 expected;

Next, I opened the cs file in VS and found for some reason the opening brace in Application_PreSendRequestHeaders was commented which was just weird, Don't know how it could have happened. 

Fix was to remove the comment and then save the Global.asax.cs file and that got me back to business.

Happy Operating D 365 :-) Have fun.

Quick tip - How to acivate demo data for Fleet Management in AX 7

Greetings!

Fleet Management is a custom module introduced in AX 7 for demo and training purpose and we have some tutorials around fleet management.

The other day I was putting up a quick demo around reservation management workspace and found the workspace empty with no data in it.

A quick way to activate Fleet Management with demo data is to go to

Fleet Management > Setup > Fleet Setup > Create sample customers, rentals and vehicles

Happy Daxing!

LCS - Monthly Updates

Greetings!

A core component to the new Dynamics AX is LCS and it's recommended to keep an eye on the monthly updates:

        

In August, the following key features were updated:

• Database Refresh Request - You can request that sandbox environments to be refreshed with DB backups directly from LCS.
• Methodology Update - Now, you can attach documents to methodology tasks
• Issue Search - View additional status details for active bugs and subscribe to email notifications when an issue is resolved. View detailed info about the line number and code changes

More details here - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/lcs/2016/09/02/august-2016-release-notes/

Dynamics AX 2012 and SQL 2016 Support

Greetings Friends!

A quick post!

Microsoft has recently announced the support for AX 2012 with SQL Server 2016. This is exciting news as we have more possibilities integrating Dynamics AX 2012 with Power BI and Entity Store

Announcing support for Office 2016 and SQL Server 2016 with AX 2012 R3 and R2

Troubleshooting Illegal data conversion from original field synchronization Errors Dynamics AX 2012

Hi All,

Recently, I encountered this synchronization error in AX 2012

Error:

I got this error on opening Customer form after I did a update of my local AX with a copy from UAT AX.

Error:

Illegal data conversion from original field CustTable.ServiceRegionsDN to CustTable.ServiceOrderDN: unable to convert data types to anything but character field type (14 to 49)

Note: ServiceRegionsDN and ServiceOrderDN are custom VAR fields.

Solution:

Note - Please be careful while doing any SQL update from database. I did this in my local sandbox, Not recommended to do it in Production AX.

Check the field id in AOT and compare it with SQLDictionary table in SQL with the following query

select * from sqldictionary where TABLEID in (select TABLEID from sqldictionary where name = 'CustTable')
and name = 'ServiceRegionsDN '

Update SQLDictoniary table with the correct fieldid
update SQLDICTIONARY set fieldid = 60080 where TABLEID in 
(select TABLEID from sqldictionary where name = 'CustTable'
)
and name = 'ServiceRegionsDN '

Reference - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/axsupport/2012/09/19/troubleshooting-aot-synchronization-errors/

Dynamics AX 7 Update 1 Released

Dear All,

Just letting you know Microsoft has released Update 1 for AX 7. You can read more about this release and What's New Over here - https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/whats-new-or-changed-in-dynamics-ax-7/

The steps for deploying this update from LCS onto your environments are listed in the release notes over here - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/lcs/2016/05/27/may-2016-release-notes/

Steps and Tips to Deploy the new Dynamics AX 7 Environment on Azure

Greetings All!

I'm so excited to share the news that Microsoft has released a public preview of the new Microsoft Dynamics AX aka "AX 7". What a journey and transformation it has been for the product - from the then called Navision Axapta 2.5 version to the New Dynamics AX 7. It's just amazing!

I just finished deploying a brand new Dynamics AX environment and thought to share some tips and hints which I learned on the way.

This wiki site link shows you the steps to deploy a new dynamics ax environment on Azure, so I won't be going through the screenshots. However, I will be listing out the steps and sharing some interesting tips.

Pre-Requisites:

Azure Subscription required (Microsoft offers a free trial for those who don't have an existing subscription). Please check this link - Free Azure Trial

Deployment Steps:

a. Firstly, you will need to login to PartnerSource or CustomerSource and then there's a section on "How to access Dynamics AX"

How to access Microsoft Dynamics AX

The organization administrator should click HERE to obtain the Microsoft Dynamics AX CTP8 offer.  

You will need to click on the "HERE" link which will take you to Office 365 page where you will need to sign-in with a new Office 365 account. I tried with my existing Office 365 account but it doesn't take me in.

b. Next is the Add Users Section . You can ignore it if you are the only one going to access the Dynamics AX 7 environment as an Admin. 

c. Staying in Office 365 portal window, you can click on Dynamics Rainier Preview which will launch the Lifecycle services

d. Once you are in LifeCycle Services, you can now go ahead and deploy Dynamics AX 7 environment, before you that you will need to add a new Azure environment. At this stage, you can use your existing Azure subscription id or your new Azure id. Follow the steps mentioned in the "Deploy Dynamics AX 7 Environments Section"  in the above link.

e. Once you reach Step 4 where you need to upload the management certificate back to Azure portal, make sure you stay in the classic portal https://manage.windowsazure.com/ because that will help you with uploading the management certificates back to Azure portal. The new Azure portal uses service principals concept which will not help us with this deployment.

f. Now once you have added the subscription id and management certificate upload as per the steps, you are ready to deploy Dynamics AX 7 on the cloud. Go ahead and deploy it.

Select the region which is closest to you, In my case I live in Melbourne so I chose Australia South East that is closest Azure Data center to me.

I have gone with the default D3 plan. It took around 4 hours for me to get the new Dynamics AX deployed on Azure.

Once it's deployed, then you will get the details from Lifecycle Services (see the above dashboard), where you can log on to Dynamics AX 7. Also you have an option to download the rdp and log on to the Demo box.

Enjoy!

Dynamics AX 7 Wiki launched

Dear All,

A quick post - 

Microsoft has launched a wiki site for Dynamics AX 7 where you get to read many new and exciting things happening in the 'AX 7' world.

You can bookmark this link to your favorites!

https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/

Happy Dax'ing

Dynamics AX 7 Development with Visual Studio

Greetings!

I saw this video on you tube and thought to share with you. This video demonstrates how to use Visual Studio to create a Dynamics AX 7 Project and Add an EDT in AX without MorphX as we all know by now MorphX is taken out in AX 7.

Good video and thanks for sharing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05KsvTcmySs&list=PLIh45kooHi8fcPZIAF8zosVaOGg0ll-D9&index=4

Anti-Virus Exclusions for SQL Server, SSRS and Dynamics AX AOS Servers for improved performance

This post is about sharing my experience where I helped some clients to improve their overall application performance.

Quite often I have seen, we neglect the anti-virus softwares which run on our production boxes and scan application and data files, thereby leading to disk I/O and performance issues.

We need to add an exclusion list in our Anti-Virus software to exclude scanning files for SQL, SSRS and Dynamics AX 

A. SQL Server: 

The following paths needs to be excluded:

Sqlserv.exe C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Binn

Full Text Index Catalog C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\FTData

Data Files (.mdf/.ndf) D:\DATA (Path where SQL Database data files are located)

Log Files (.ldf) E:\Logs (Path where SQL Log files are located)

TempDB files F:\Tempdb (Path where tempdb files are located)

Backup Files (.bak, .trn) G:\Backup (Path where SQL Backup files are located)


B. SSRS Server :

ReportingServicesService.exe D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS11.MSSQLSERVER\Reporting Services\ReportServer\bin


C. Dynamics AX 2012 AOS Server :

Xppil folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Server\AXPROD\bin\XppIL
Label files C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Server\AXPROD\bin\Application\Appl