Problems using Excel Workbook Creator in AX “7”

We have started working with some customers who are looking into implementing The New Dynamics AX (aka AX 7) and one of the very useful features in AX are integration with the Microsoft Office. This has historically been done using an Office Addin which has been installed from the AX Install CD (of deployed by IT). In the new AX version this is done a little differently. You need to install a plugin from the Office Store (which I talk about here).

The other day one of my colleagues came to me and told me that it did work to use the Excel workbook creator… the login failed Sad smile. The login started, the user was redirected to our ADFS site and it was visible for a moment and then it was redirected to a blank place with the address: https://az689774.vo.msecnd.net/dynamicsofficeapp/v1.2.1.0/App/DynamicsApp.html#id_token

SNAGHTMLdc73d34

This is an issue with Office and how Office handles ADFS logins according to this article. According to Microsoft this has been fixed in the 16.0.6868.2060  build of Office 2016. This build is at the moment (2016-05-20) only available for Office Insiders which means that if you are using Office 365 your admin needs to enable you for Current Channel and you need to reinstall Office. 

Links:

https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/office-integration-troubleshooting/

Using Office Integration in Dynamics AX

Today one of my customer had trouble using the Excel Workbook Designer in Dynamics AX (“7”). He got the following error when he tried opening the workbook in Excel:

SNAGHTML1023f908

The Error is No Applet Registration found

Turns out he had not installed Microsoft Dynamics Office Add-in which can be found here: https://store.office.com/microsoft-dynamics-office-add-in-WA104379629.aspx?assetid=WA104379629&sourcecorrid=a8afb77b-cfe0-4b70-baeb-f93fa38ad77b&searchapppos=0

Once this was install it worked great Smile

/Johan

Adding users from another AAD tenant to AX7

In AX 2012 and prior it was a little tricky to add external users. You basically could not, so you needed to add an Active Directory Account to your AD and import it as a AX user. You might not want to add external users in your AD.

This is much easier in AX7 (it should be Dynamics AX but it is much harder to search for on the internets)… much, much easier… you see AX 7 does not handle identity at all…  it trusts Azure Active Directory for this. A requirement is that the external company uses Azure Active Directory.

Note (Added later): If you have set up the AX install in Azure using LCS the “default” Azure Active Directory is the one connected for your Azure tenant. These users are not treated as external users and do not need the modification below.

So, to add an external user to AX you go to System Administration – Users and click New to add a new user. The user we want to add in our example is Kalle Kula, Kalle has the email address kalle.kula@innoworks.com

image

The only thing missing is that we need to specify the Azure AD tenant in the domain field and set it to https://sts.windows.net/innoworks.com (which is not completely visible in the screenshot)

image

Save the user and add roles and we are all set!

/Johan

Exporting to Excel in AX7

So, last week Microsoft released the RTW version of the new AX version called Microsoft Dynamics AX.

One of my colleagues was playing around with it a bit and bumped into a problem. When he tried to export to Excel he got the following:

The browser tries to connect to this address (and obviously this does not exist)

http://127.0.0.1:10000/devstoreaccount1/office-exports/

The reason for this is of course that the web app is trying to access the server on IP 127.0.0.1 port 10000 and since I am not doing this logged into the server console it will not work (it does work if i am logged in to the console)

To get this working you need to do these operations:

  1. On the server edit the file C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\Storage Emulator\AzureStorageEmulator.exe.config and change the IP to the correct address (or name)
  2. Edit the file C:\CustomerServiceUnit\DOBind\Packages\Cloud\AosWebApplication\AosWebApplication.csx\roles\AosWeb\approot\web.config and change <add key=”AzureStorage.StorageConnectionString” value=”UseDevelopmentStorage=true” /> to <add key=”AzureStorage.StorageConnectionString” value=”UseDevelopmentStorage=true;DevelopmentStorageProxyUri=http://YourLocalIP” />
  3. Open the tcp ports 10000, 10001 and 10002 to the server
  4. Links:
    https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Faxforum.info%2Fforums%2Fshowthread.php%3Fp%3D325949 (with a little help from Google Translate)

Workflow issues in “AX 7” Onprem Demo environment

We have set up the new AX demo environment on our Hyper-V lab environment. Most of the features are running fine but there are some issues which we are trying to fix as they arise. Today my colleague was trying to edit a workflow and got an error. Turns out you need a specific application to edit the workflow and this app is downloaded and installed on the fly when you click the link. The problem here is that the SSL certificate in the AX environment is not trusted, this is not an issue when you use a normal browser since you can ignore the error, but it prohibits my computer from installing the application. Here is how you solve the error:

NOTE: THIS IS A TEMPORARY SOLUTION, IT IS IMPLEMENTED TO ACCESS A TRUSTED LAB ENVIRONMENT. YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER DO THIS WITH A CERTIFICATE YOU COMPLETELY TRUST!!!!! IF YOU DO THIS WITH THE INCORRECT CERTIFICATE IT MEANS THAR BAD GUYS CAN SPY ON YOUR SECURE TRAFFIC!!!!!

  1. Browse to your AX site, click on the Certificate Error button and select View Certificates

    image

  2. On the windows that appears click Install Certificate and select to install it into your Trusted Root Certificate

    image   image 

    image  image

    image

  3. Restart your browser and log back into your AX environment and verify that there no longer is a certificate warning

image

 

Now when you go to edit a Workflow you do not get an error Smile

image  image

You just login and the install will start automatically and you can edit the workflow.

image

 

NOTE AGAIN: THIS IS A TEMPORARY SOLUTION, IT IS IMPLEMENTED TO ACCESS A TRUSTED LAB ENVIRONMENT. YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER DO THIS WITH A CERTIFICATE YOU COMPLETELY TRUST!!!!! IF YOU DO THIS WITH THE INCORRECT CERTIFICATE IT MEANS THAR BAD GUYS CAN SPY ON YOUR SECURE TRAFFIC!!!!!