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Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Tips AXBuild.exe - A quicker way to compile your AX application

Greetings All!

Lately, I'm using AxBuild.exe to do my compilation and it's really quick. Have now used it several number of times and really impressed with the faster response time compared to traditional way of compiling your code.

Some useful links for AXBuild

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn528954.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/axtools/archive/2013/11/04/parallel-x-compilation-for-microsoft-dynamics-ax2012-r2-in-cumulative-update-7.aspx


In my scenario, I did a build  with 12 worker threads and it took me less than 13 minutes to compile the application




Troubleshoot Missing Labels on Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU8 Cloud hosted environment Azure VM

Dear Friends,

Greetings!

I recently provisioned a Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU8 VM (on Azure). All good, however the out of the box SSRS Reports were not showing the labels correctly

To fix the issue, below blog helped me:

https://community.dynamics.com/ax/b/rudrasdynamicsthoughts/archive/2014/09/17/missing-sys-and-syp-labels-in-ax4-0-ax2009-and-ax2012.aspx

To summarize, I did the following steps:

a. Backup the application folder

b. Delete the ald files

c. Delete the auc files

d. Restart AOS

e. Restart SQL Server Reporting Services















Thursday, January 15, 2015

Dynamics AX 2012 R3 CU8 Installation Steps



Dear Friends,

Greetings and Wish you all Happy New Year! Hope you had a great start!

In this blog post, I will be sharing my experience on upgrading CU8 to my existing AX 2012 R3 environments. I had to upgrade on 6 environments and let me tell you the installation experience of CU8 is quite different from my previous experiences with AX versions and there’s a set of things you would need to complete.

You can read about the CU8 Release, what’s included in the update, Help content over here - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/axsupport/archive/2014/11/19/cumulative-update-8-for-microsoft-dynamics-ax-2012-r3-now-available.aspx

Based on the installation guide and other technet articles I have prepared my own steps which helped me to install in multiple environments, Thought to share with you below:

1.        Backup AX2012 R3 Model and Prod database
2.        For a test upgrade, you can Restore to a copy of both model and prod database
3.        After restore, Check permissions to see if the aos service account is mapped rightly to the restored database
4.        Install new aos pointing to the restored database
5.        Change system service accounts in AX
6.        Change Server configuration , Batch Server so that it points to the new AOS
7.        Refresh WCF Config from client (Generate a new one if prompted to)
8.        Export the newly configured axc file
9.        Go to Lifecycle Services -> Create a new project for the environment you are planning to upgrade CU8
Tip - Make sure you enable Active scripting in your IE Settings in-order to work with the new Lifecycle Services Dashboard
a.        Open Internet Explorer, click the "Tool" button in the menu bar, select the "Internet Options" button and then select the "Security" tab
b.         Select the "Internet" area, select "Custom Level" and go to the "Security Settings - Internet Zone" box.
c.        Click the checkbox to enable "Active Scripting" under the Scripting section and then click the OK button to apply the settings.
d.        Restart your browser when finished to apply the settings and enable JavaScript

10.     Download the installer package from System Diagnostic  menu in LCS
11.     Run the installer on AOS box
12.     Create a new certificate via the wizard












13.     Upload the certificate in LCS
14.     I used the aos service account below here
15.    












16.     Once installed, Run the LCS Diagnostic tool to discover the environment which we need to upgrade
17.      Run Discover environment wizard to discover the environments
19.     Upload the environment to LCS
20.     Now go to System diagnostic in LCS -> Click on update button




18. 














21.     Use option 1 that is update installer for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 if you already have AX 2012 R3 installed
22.     Verify that you have appropriate permissions. To run the Update installer, you must have administrator rights on the local computer and System Administrator rights in Microsoft Dynamics AX. 
23.     To install application hotfixes, you must have the following additional rights in Microsoft SQL Server:
-          You are a member of the Securityadmin server role on the SQL Server instance.
-          You are assigned to the db_owner role in the model database.
24.     Run AXupdate.exe


















Tip – Suggest you to save the package (axupdate.exe) and hence need not go through the download option again and again.



















25.     Run Axupdate.exe and update the binary and application fixes
26.     While doing the binary updates, if you encounter the below CLR error for SQL Server 2012, make sure you download it from the below website

               













27.     Also you would need to install Report Viewer Control as it’s one of the pre-requisite for Binary Updates
28.     Run Intitialize-AXModelStore \
PS C:\Windows\system32> Initialize-AXModelStore -Database <DatabaseName> -Se
rver <ServerName>
Model store schema successfully created.


29.     Restart AOS
30.     Run the software update checklist from AX
31.     Do Full compile via axbuild.exe (Will save you some time!)
32.     Make sure to check the AX Log and fix all  compilation errors before you head on to the next step
33.     Do CIL Compile
34.     Resolve the compilation errors before running data upgrade
35.     Run through data upgrade checklist
36.     Run the axupdate.exe on the report server as well to update report components



Appendix 


Axbuild.exe (syntax below)

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Server\AX2012PROD\bin>axbuild.exe xppcompileall /s=02 /altbin="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Client\Bin"



If you are getting CIL Compile Errors, that means go and check the normal Compile App log, and fix all the errors which you find there and then do a CIL Compile again to make it success



SSRS Upgrade

To upgrade SSRS components of AX, Run AXupdate.exe from the SSRS instance box

Client Upgrade

To upgrade Client components and Office Add-in, run axupdate.exe from where the client is installed.

For me, the office-add ins were not getting successfully installed at the first time and hence my client installation was not successful, and in order to fix it, I had to uninstall the previous R3 client, reboot the system, make sure the client/bin folder is not there, reinstall R3 client and then run axupdate.exe – this time it was successful

AIF Upgrade

If AIF and IIS are on different boxes, then make sure to run axupdate.exe from that box

Install Visual Studio 2013 Developer tools

In order to install VS 2013, you would need to first uninstall VS 2010 developer components by running AX2012 R3 Setup/installer and then reboot and install VS 2013 Developer tools. (Before installing VS 2013 Developer tools, you need to have full VS 2013 Installed – In my case, I have premium version of VS 2013)


To uninstall VS 2010 Developer tools Run Dynamics AX 2012 R3 Installer > remove component