Tips: Configuring Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal after installation on CTP7 and CTP8 builds of the latest Dynamics AX release

Introduction

Over the last couple of months we have had a number of customers go live on the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics AX, and some of them have decided to use the Advanced Warehousing solution including the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal (WMDP) that is shipped together with AX.

In my last post I provided links for how to install and use the portal:
http://kashperuk.blogspot.dk/2016/01/tutorial-warehouse-mobile-devices.html

Here I would like to focus on a few aspects we've learnt based on interaction with the Go-Live customers, that will hopefully help some of you to avoid the same problems.

Tip 1

In CTP7 and CTP8 (in case you don't know what CTP stands for, read wiki) WMDP was not strongly signed. That means that on your environment after installation, you could receive an error like below (In Event Log):

Exception information: 

    Exception type: ConfigurationErrorsException 

    Exception message: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Whs.Web, Version=7.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. Strong name signature could not be verified.  The assembly may have been tampered with, or it was delay signed but not fully signed with the correct private key. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131045)

In the final (RTW) release of Microsoft Dynamics AX the assembly is strongly signed.

But if you are on CTP7 or CTP8, you can refer to one of the below solutions:

Solution 1

One thing you can do to resolve this is sign the assembly, using the strong name tool in a command like the following:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal\DEFAULT\bin> sn -Vr .\Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Whs.Web.dll

This is the preferred approach.

For test environments, you could also just go with Solution 2

Solution 2

You can also just disable strong name verification on the machine you are testing out the portal on, by modifying the registry with commands below (for x86 and x64):

reg DELETE HKLM\Software\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification /f
reg ADD HKLM\Software\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\*,* /f
reg DELETE HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification /f
reg ADD HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\*,* /f 

Or, if you want to limit the scope of allowed non-signed assemblies, you can restrict it to just the WMDP dll in the above ADD commands like below:

reg ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Whs.Web,31bf3856ad364e35

reg ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\StrongName\Verification\Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Whs.Web,31bf3856ad364e35 

If you want to learn a bit more (or get a ready PowerShell function for the above), refer to this blog post.

Tip 2

WMDP is an ASP.NET MVC based web site and has a number of important configuration options in its web.config file. You can read more about the configuration options on MSDN.

One particular setting is important to note, since it is believed that it has an "incorrect" value by default after installation in AX 2012 CU8 build.

The setting is customErrors, and you can read all about it on MSDN

In production environments, this setting should always be set to "On", as WMDP X++ code in some cases throws unhandled exceptions, which result in a complete meltdown of the web site, if not redirected correctly to a user-friendly error page. 

The "Off" setting can be used on test environments when debugging the site, as it will provide call stack information for what happened. 

Hope this helps!

And let me know if you have additional tips to add here about WMDP, I will gladly add them here