Finally, SharePoint 2010 running on my Windows 7 Laptop... :-)

Finally, I got Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 running on my Window 7 laptop, was suffered a lot with incomplete and inclear steps suggested by Microsoft Guide "Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint Server".

I'll suggest to go through comments on the page first, also http://www.mcpblog.net/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=8f2497f6-e77b-4e70-8400-e020b292165c&ID=61 helps to pass through step 8 on configuration wizard.

Update (2010/03/07): download http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23806

Best of Luck.

Setup and Customization of an Axapta Enterprise Portal.

Yesterday, I tried to collect some of EX-Project experiences and skill in Microsoft Dynamics, I have worked few months ago to setup and Enterprise portal and then to customization of the same portal. At that time it was really fresh and new experience for me particularly with limited help on 4.o version. It was self learning experience and that's why I thought to drive the same experience but with latest version of SharePoint (MOSS 2007). I hope it will be a good start or reading for any new comer in such domain.

Steps need to perform as pre-requisites for setting up Enterprise Portal.
1. Have a look to below prerequisites before you start setup process.

1.1 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa493471.aspx, visit the link to see setup guide of MS Dynamics Ax 4.0

1.2 Verify the components installed, and make sure Enterprise portal and supportive components are available to use.

1.3 Make sure other supportive server implementation have all services packs and updates in place if applicable.

1.4 For using reporting services with EP you must to ensure reporting services are well configured and ad-hoc reports also have proper configuration.

1.5 Also it is advice able to uninstall Internet Explorer Enhance Security Configuration.

2. Create Business Connector Proxy account in DC, make sure you create an account with flags like password not expire and to keep more security measures for proxy account you can also flag no interactive rights. You must give following groups right in order to make sure the account works for Business Connector.
IIS_WPG
WSS_WPG
Also it needs any other custom groups if you have plan to access such information falling under those groups inside EP.

3. SharePoint portal or WSS site should have .NET 2.o configuration in IIS.

4. Proxy account which we created for Business connector should have login access of SQL Server as well as it should have dbcreator server role.

5. Configure SharePoint site as integrated windows authentication, you can change the configuration by routing to Application Management -> Application Security -> Authentication Providers. It will list all security configuration, by default it will display 'default' label, you can select active configuration and change to Integrated Windows Authentication with NTLM (EP Portal don't support Kerberos delegation method).

6. Select the application pool in IIS on which EP portal is going to run, check the properties and then Identity tab, change credential to proxy account which we created for business connector. Always rebounce the IIS after any change in contexts by using iisreset /noforce.

7. Open the web.config file of SharePoint file and make sure trust level is WSS_Medium if not then change it to WSS_Medium, you can have custom level of security configuration on need and requirement. It is also advisable to give executionTimeout configuration for 6000 ms for httpRuntime calls.

8. Add below webparts into safecontrol so SharePoint site can use them without any obstructed. IF you are using any custom webparts please make sure they are also listed in safecontrol tags. Recycle the IIS Process after web.config update by using iisreset /noforce command.

Steps for deploy Enterprise Portal.
1. Drive to Enterprise portal configuration wizard (Administration > Setup > Internet > Enterprise Portal > Configuration Wizard), click on wizard and then click on Next button.

2. Configure user groups and map them to Enterprise portal groups. Make sure the customized groups are correctly mapped into Enterprise portal.

3. on next screen you need to give credentials for Business Connector, you can supply proxy user which we have created for Business Connector.

4. Next screen will ask you to map documents type to document categories in Enterprise portal.

5. On fifth screen you need to configure module documents categories.

6. Next wizard form will ask you to configure document movement, number of days that document need to include in the list of latest documents etc.

7. Configure transaction summaries.

8. By clicking on Next Wizard you will be diverted to Enterprise portal deployments wizard if it is already been deployed and you will be diverted to Manage Enterprise Portal Deployment forum (GO to step 11 else follow order). Check below screen to refer deployment wizard.



9. Next screen will ask you to mentioned IIS virtual directory and SSP site to deploy metadata and EP components. Here you can select option for deployment like if you want to use only webparts then you can select webpart deployment that will enable site to used deployed webpart. By selecting full deployment you will get site templates which will be useful to create site collections under Enterprise portal and pre-generated pages for all system objects. Refer below screen.



10. By click on the last page of the wizard you can finish the deployment as well it will give you two option if you want to restart IIS server after deployment and SharePoint new site wizard (SharePoint admin site).



11. Below you can see Site collection form to create and configure new site. Check at the template section where you can see under the custom template tab that list shows Enterprise portal templates which we can use to create portals.



12. Cross your figures and it everything went well in previous steps then you will find the below screen as a success. :-)



13. If the user you are accessing is not registered or mapped under the Axapta then you will see below message.



14. You can setup the relationship between web user and Axapta user by user relationship form (Administration -> Setup -> User relations). Map the user to correct Axapta user.



15. You can also configure site URL to internal website group.



16. Bingo... Now it's done... You have now setup the site and portal.



This article mentioned to create website portal in general scenario you might need to change or perform more steps in order to deploy enterprise portal in working order in different scenarios and needs.

The default deployment will give you all pre developed web solution and interactive pages inside portal. Obliviously every organization needs customization in portal in order to streamline the Axapta main installation customization to streamline portal and native implementation. It is very important to understand Ax, X++, AOT, AOS and development interfaces inside Axapta client to make that customization possible. Main components need to incorporate for streamlining such customization are changes in Data dictionary, functional default processes and data ownership and security. Changes and implementation in native Ax rollout are not automatically going to enterprise portal. You must ensure the same customizations, changes are been implemented in web solution and components and they both went live on the same point of time otherwise it could create complications and integrity issues with present and new data. As within this article I am not covering such practices but given high level idea before any customization with portal.

Customization of Enterprise portal in Axapta.
1. Below you can see the AOT (Application Object Tree), AOT displays entire object model of Axapta like classes, objects, forms, website (web forms, weblets, menus, urls etc...). You can directly add, update and delete that object and start customizing the product from AOT only. But it is not advisable, it's always advisable to take backup (export *.aox) of those target models and object which we are planning to change. Then using projects window you can add new forms and customization which will give you better control over changes and customization.







2. After customization you can compile project or root element of AOT Tree (if doing direct level customization), refer above image which shows in bottom pane about compilation results.

3. After compilation, changes should deploy through manage deployment form (Administration -> Setup -> Internet -> Enterprise Portal -> Manage deployment). IT will give you the control about which associated and register site should receive the recent updates. Unfortunately there is no such versioning and source control available for such changes and deployment, so always it's good practice to export customizations and take the backup and archive those export files (*.xoa). By clicking update button on the screen it will deploy the changes on the sleeted servers and will show deployment summary in new window as seen in below screen.



4. After deployment you can find such customization (new menus, urls, links, and form etc objects) in the list properties of different Enterprise portal’s webparts.



Here in the article, I haven't gone deep inside about the customization. Will defiantly try to come-up with new detail article about the customization of the Enterprise portal.

Hope my article helps you in any manner to understand the process, please share your views and send your feedback to nilayparikh@gmail.com

System Center Capacity Planner 2007 - A nice point to kick-off IT Infrastructure planning and design for MOSS 2007

System Center Capacity Planner 2007 - A nice point to kick-off IT Infrastructure planning and design for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007).

Recently, I have been trying and exploring number of best practices to design and plan IT Infrastructure especially for BizTalk and SharePoint Portal Server implementation. In my exploration drive I come across a very nice tool called System Center Capacity Planner 2007. Here in the post I would like to focus just on MOSS 2007.

The tool allows you to plan hardware, servers and service across organization, different location, etc. There nice demo and help already available inside tool itself so would not like to paste here but there are some snapshot, I would like to post along with the blog post.

You can download the tool from below link. http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?familyid=DBEE0227-D4F7-48F8-85F0-E71493B2FD87&displaylang=en

The tool also provides nice wizard to start planning. Have a look to some below snapshots for designs and reports.

1. Global Topology View

I tried to build organization's global topology. Where server farm is located in one continental and that is connected to various offices, branches across the glob. To evaluate such need for implementation, hardware design, scale out processes for services, service and load balance distributions are tricky and time consuming. System Center Planner 2007 perfect tool for such analysis and design. It simulate load and provide stats which could be very helpful for such design and planning.

2. Site Topology View.

3. Server Role Configuration, to design scale out topology it's very important. Also help while making decision to buy new hardware and scale up/out planning.

4. User Profiles which are role based and component base. Allows tool to predict more accurately.

5. Simulation Report.

Tool generate rich statistics in report, where you can estimate with such number of users and dependent on their role, latency in network what will be longest transactions, I/O utilization, Highest CPU Utilization, Bottleneck analysis, Highest storage space utilization, connectivity utilization, etc. It also generate different stats for all servers, clients, SANs, WANs and Thresholds.

Please send your views and feedback at nilayparikh@gmail.com

Thanks.

MOSS 2007 - Workflows and it exposes to Enterprise Information Integration and Enterprise Application Integration

I am personally very excited about MOSS 2007 and it's brand new key futures, from last few weeks I am really involving my self to see MOSS's new key futures and it's innovative implementation(s) for those areas intersecting with Integration, rather it's Enterprise Information Integration (EII), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) or Data Integration (ETL). I have worked in my past with SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and it was really complicated to integrate different user activities/events with across the enterprise through BizTalk and Web services. Always it dragged me to develop more custom components/web parts/web controls and calling web services, transferring information and events through BizTalk server. Looks really complicated but believe me it was much tougher then it looks...

Now at new mission I am trying to find out more flexible integration/Work flow base implementations, here I have developed one sample solution to support my view on the Information Integration within MOSS 2007 Tasks and announcement. I am primarily trying to develop some workflow which can pick announcement which is direct live integration with sample Loan Application Management (any custom application generate application details) through WF (which hosts on Windows Services and connected through WCF for my sample, it's open space for any integration tool provide direct integration with MOSS site like BizTalk ;-) etc...). Let me comeback to sample, now I have developed one pilot Workflow which pick each announcement and generate tasks on SharePoint as well as through WCF/Web services it integration with external applications too. Another Workflow application get invoked on completion event of those Task and automatically generate following to do tasks and assign automatically.

Now these workflow also provide me standards functionalities of Windows Workflow Foundation, like listen, event base routing (you can check my previous articles to know more about event base routing), it's really empower developer to go beyond the classic and traditional boundaries of SharePoint sites to next generation workflow and information oriented collaboration development.

Let's back to sample, workflow1 picks announcement and process it and generate proper Task and other artifices, too. In the process of generating automated task and artefacts it's utilize many EII services to authenticate credit and other historical information of an applicant.

You can see below snap, first activity shape will invoke the workflow on any new announcement arrival or creation. Then the workflow is trying to received data and contract through Get activity and parallel processing other code too. At end of successful processing of whole parallel shape it will create all tasks needed for the announcement and at end it will log whole history. Please have a look at figure-1 and figure-2.





After deployment on to your MOSS Site you can check the workflow status by going to Site Settings->Galleries->Workflows. You can see figure-3 and figure-4 for site navigation and Workflow Collection. Site Collection Workflow will show you the association of the workflow to different activities and In-progress workflows too.





Let's come to another sample workflow of the pilot solution, which watch on every complete event of Task and according to the event it flow the application further for consideration and human approval. Where it also involve it self into request response with Web services and EII Service contract through workflow service. And similarly create further to do events in MOSS site.
Have look to MOSS Site Snaps.

1. Creating announcement for sample Loan Application.


2. You can see below figure announcement has been added to list. It shows 11111 id for loan application.


3. After sometime it was picked by workflow and processed, in solution I have appended string called " Processed By...", you can see here it has updated title of announcement and also added new relevant task for the loan application. During the creating of new task it went though to WCF application and receive back some valuable credit information and rating.


4. Task's detail page, you can see here generated description and information.


5. Once Task has been completed another workflow2 processed it and generated siblings task and to-do also it updated the title of the task (You can track related artifacts by "11111" id).


Such futures of MOSS 2007 make life easy for Integration developer and we can also develop such infrastructure suits MOSS 2007 features which help more easy and quick development for complex definitions.

Previously I was using BizTalk adapter or custom .net code but it always want huge resource to implement such workflow and integration for SharePoint site also it increase high volume of data and security threats while such implementation like workflow really help to develop much abstracted information and service access layers and less resource consuming infrastructure artifacts. I analyze such implementing with workflow pattern and pilot application performance results, it has ability to shirk our transaction volume across BizTalk by 40% compare to previous and 50% better performance with easy to maintain requirement. These are not derived figures but these are my assumption on the standard scenario which I analyzed.

Hope you liked this article and please send your valuable feedback and ideas to nilayparikh@gmail.com