Microsoft Dynamics AX

Automated backups of D365FO databases.

When you work with LCS then below list of data base movement operations are familiar to you. Nowadays exporting and refreshing can also be triggered with the Database Movement API This can become extremely handy for daily automated backups of D365FO databases. How we do it? With DEVOPS release pipelines. The pipeline looks like this. The BACKUP TST is disabled because the API does not ‘yet’ support Tier 1 Databases.

Speeding up

Because we had to apply automated backups of D365FO databases at multiple customers. It became time consuming. So, we optimized it. All customer specific setting became Variables of the pipeline. Because customer specific Client ID, Client Secret, and password, are sensitive information we have hidden them. Be aware in case you unhide, the values are cleared.

PowerShell

Below PowerShell script is a sample of how we generate the Token. This token is later used on the backup commands PowerShell.

$tokenUrl = “https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/token” $tokenBody = @{ grant_type = “password” client_id = “$(CLIENTID)” client_secret = “$(CLIENTSECRET)” resource = “https://lcsapi.lcs.dynamics.com” username = “$(USERNAME)” password = “$(PASSWORD)” } $tokenResponse = Invoke-RestMethod -Method ‘POST’ -Uri $tokenUrl -Body $tokenBody $token = $tokenResponse.access_token Write-Host “##vso[task.setvariable variable=TOKEN] $token”

In the next sample we create the backup

$cstzone = [System.TimeZoneInfo]:ConvertTimeBySystemTimeZoneId( (Get-Date), ‘W. Europe Standard Time’) $filedate = Get-Date $cstzone -f “yyy-MM-dd” $BackupName = “ACC-$filedate” Write-Output $BackupName $refreshUrl = “https://lcsapi.lcs.dynamics.com/databasemovement/v1/export/project/$(LCSPRPOJID)/environment/$(ACC)/backupName/$BackupName” $refreshHeader = @{ Authorization = “Bearer $(TOKEN)” “x-ms-version” = ‘2017-09-15’ “Content-Type” = “application/json” } $refreshResponse = Invoke-RestMethod $refreshUrl -Method ‘POST’ -Headers $refreshHeader Write-Output $refreshResponse

And the DEVOPS insider will comment, yeah dream on, no build , is also no release. True, you just must reuse a build pool in your environment.

Please be aware that MS is throttling these requests, only 3 backups a day are possible.
And at the end, we generate an email notification for the people that really need it.

LCS

We do not use the alerts from LCS, it causes simply too many emails. So, we disable the next notification for all LCS users

Don’t forget the other handy LCS tricks

Performance tuning development VM

It is a general complain of any developer. Why is it so SLOOOWWWWW? And yes, it is slow. But there are performance tuning tricks.  Slow is influence on 3 things

• Startup VM
  • Is also startup of
    • Batches
    • Management reporter
    • Windows security
    • Windows update
    • Windows maintenance
  • SQL
    • There is no SQL maintenance
  • Disk
    • Storage type

You could disable the batches & management reporter. That will help. But the real issue is how the disks of that VM are configured.  In general, it looks like below 16 lazy disks.

Now you can change these to faster disks , but please be aware of the prices. Also, these are managed disk, the cost fixed amount every month, so stopping the VM will not reduce below cost.

Size	Premium SSD	Standard SSD	Standard HDD
64   GiB	9.47	4.05	2.54
128 GiB	18.29	8.10	4.97
256 GiB	35.26	16.20	9.56
512 GiB	67.92	32.39	18.36

How does the disk migration work?  The first step is migration to managed disks

Managed Disks simplify disk management for VMs by managing the Storage accounts behind the scenes. Managed Disks also provide granular access control with RBAC and better reliability for VMs in an Availability Set. Learn more about the benefits of using Managed Disks

Source unmanaged disks are not deleted after the migration. Managed Disks are created by making a copy of the source disks. You can revert back to unmanaged disks by creating a new VM with the source disks. Configuration of the VMs is not changed after the migration. Learn more about migrating to Managed Disks

In order to complete migration, we will need to start the virtual machine. Once migration is complete, you may stop the virtual machine.

Next you can change all the discs

But hold on 16 disks multiplied with 18.29 makes 292 euro on top of running the VM. This is very expensive in the relation to how you use it. So next step:

• Archive your code & database.
• Delete the VM
• Deploy a new one

And of course, do not forget to setup the auto shutdown and the azure software reductions

Extensible Data Security examples – Secure by retail channel

When I initially learned AX 2012, before it got released, I was quite enthusiastic about the security changes and the organization hierarchies. Then also I learned about the eXtensible Data Security (XDS) concept. While working on one of my first AX2012 implementations, I also had to do a presentation for a Dutch community. The topic was about the Organizations and Hierarchies. While preparing the session, I suddenly got the idea to combine security role assignments, organizational hierarchies and XDS. After the presentation, I lost the demo and objects used at that time. For another presentation during the Summit EMEA in Dublin this year, also about organizational hierarchies, I decided to create a new demo. In a former blog, you can find the link for downloading the objects for this example. (Extensible Data Security examples for Microsoft Dynamics) 

In this blog, I will explain you how this “Secure by retail channel” works functionally and technically.

(meer…)

Extensible Data Security examples – Secure by warehouse

In this post, I will  continue explaining the examples created with eXtensible Data Security. In this part, I will explain how I did think of a solution for restricting warehouse access for users. There were a lot of questions on forums in the past about how to secure this. So, for a presentation on the Summit EMEA in Dublin this year, I decided to step into the challenges that comes with securing access to warehouses and related tables like inventory journals or purchase orders. I created a demo which will be covered in this part of the XDS blog series. In addition, this is a good example how to deal with different assignment of groupings per user without creating a policy per group or user.

(meer…)

Extensible Data Security examples – Secure by legal entity

In my last blog, I shared some code examples for eXtensible Data Security (XDS). In this post, I will explain how it works and also introduce a V2 version which will be more advanced in determine which legal entities will be visible for the user.

(meer…)

Extensible Data Security examples for Microsoft Dynamics

The last few months, I did spend a lot of time on speaker sessions for the Summit EMEA, MVP Monday webcast and a coming Dutch Dynamics Community event. In the meantime, it was also extremely busy completing work. One of the topics I talked about recently, is eXtensible Data Security (XDS) in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

Code examples

There is not that much written related to this XDS topic. You may find two white papers and some blogs posts on this topic. One whitepaper also describes an example how to restrict financial dimension values.

Developing Extensible Data Security Policies (White paper) [AX 2012]

Securing Data by Dimension Value by using Extensible Data Security (White paper) [AX 2012]

As there is in general not that much knowledge and experience, I decided to share my knowledge in this area on some events and now also using my blogs.

I did create and demo some examples what can be achieved using XDS. During the sessions related to this topic, I promised to share these examples. The examples created do have the next features:

1. Secure legal entities
   When you do assign security roles with organizations assigned, by default a user can still see them all in the Legal entities form. This policy has the ability to limit it to only those assigned to the user.
2. Warehouse security
   This example show how you can achieve some record based security on warehouses and sites. It uses a custom setup form to specify the warehouses linked to a user.
3. Retail channel security
   This example is combining the organization hierarchies, security organization assignment and XDS. Quite a powerful example which could be an inspiration for you.

Detailed information how to use these examples and an explanation how they are created will be posted in separate blogs. Watch them coming or come back on this page where the links will be updated. Also, the list with examples might grow in future.

At this moment, I can share the examples based on AX2012 and they reside on my OneDrive. The same features for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations will be added in the future. The location of the code examples might change in future, so ensure to bookmark this page to be able to find the examples anytime. Currently, you can find them on this location: My OneDrive DynamicsShare

If you want to explore these examples, feel free to download and use it. The software is provided as-is and you cannot obtain any rights if something is not working correctly. You have to ensure you will install the examples in a separate environment first and test it carefully. If you have questions or feedback, feel free to add comments or send a message.

That’s all for now. Till next time!

Dynamics 365 LCS Tricks – Barcodes, Document Routing, FollowMe printing

This blog assists those who are struggling to set up some aspect of printing in D365 for Operations due to the limited documentation in circulation.

We had 2 scenarios at our customer site:

–        Barcode printing.

–        FollowMe printing.

Barcode printing

Barcode printing is not meant to be complex, but when printing to screen or printer, it did not work.  The reason was that the machine which generated the report must have the barcode font installed. When printing to screen a webpage is generated that contains the following content.

<div class=”A09b3a143224144038c9c1d23f079020e14″ lang=”en-US” style=”word-wrap:break-word;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:’BC UPC HD Wide’;”> <div>.7E6DK4/;;&lt;@@=.</div> </div>

(meer…)

Dynamics 365 LCS Tricks – install Knowledge Base (KB) article

LCS is the place for getting all the information from Microsoft related to your Dynamics 365 for Operations projects. This Web portal also allows you to get your MS fixes to your environment and knows which Knowledge Base (KB) articles have been applied.
In the next image, for instance, we can see that there are 167 fixes applicable. So, let’s start cherry picking.

(meer…)