AX 2012 R3: How to install the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal
Exciting! Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 has been released. One of the major new features is the new Warehouse management module. This module also supports the use of mobile devices to register inventory transactions in the warehouse. The mobile application is HTML based and real-time. It supports transactions for all kinds of inventory transactions such as receiving goods, putting, picking, and cycle counting. This post will tell you how to install the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal on a server.
Architecture
Before I will go into the installation part, I will first share a picture that shows the architecture of the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal. Simply explained: With the help of the Internet Information Server, a web browser can access Work (specific warehouse task) and interact with it.
The mobile device communicates with the IIS server with http requests. The IIS server runs an application which communicates with the AOS via WCF services in XML. Some configuration on e.g. appearance is set up in AX and will be communicated to the IIS server. An example is the CSS style sheet which to use. In this way it is possible to have an own look and feel in the web application. Also this can be used to support efficiently more types of devices (small screens and larger screens).
How to install it?
When you want to use mobile devices to register the work in the warehouse, you have to install the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal. As shown in the picture above, Internet Information Server must be running on the machine where you want to install this application.
- Run Microsoft Dynamics AX Setup. Choose the option to Add or modify components.
- On the Add or modify components step, enable the option Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal.
- Some prerequisites are checked. E.g. the Internet Information Server must be installed as well as the ASP.NET MVC version 2 runtime.
- When you need to configure the Warehouse Portal, you need to specify a user who is a user in Microsoft Dynamics AX and has the role Warehouse mobile device user assigned.
Also, note that the Default company of this user will determine for which company the portal will operate. I would recommend creating a dedicated (internal) user which is only used for running this portal application.
So within this step of the setup, you need to specify the internal user which meets the above-mentioned requirements.
- Within the field Website port, you need to specify an IP port number that will be used to communicate between the web browser and the Internet Information Server. In my example, I used port 13500.
- When you set up the portal, there is an uncommon additional step with Best practices. It gives inexperienced administrators some guidance on which setup should be completed to have the mobile device working with the correct user and secure enough. You have to mark the Complete checkboxes to continue the setup.
- After the summary, the AX setup will install the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal.
When the setup is finished successfully, you can find the application in the folder C:Program files (x86)Microsoft Dynamics AX60. This folder contains a folder with an instance and application files to run the portal via the Internet Information Server. One of the subfolders contains the CSS style sheets. You can add or change the style sheets to have another look and feel.
When you open the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, you can notice the portal has been installed and you can review some settings.
When you want to run the Mobile device, you need to open an internet browser on a device and type the URL http://[Machinename]:[Website port]. In my example the machine name is AX2012R3 and the website port 13500 was specified in the Microsoft Dynamics AX setup. You can create a friendlier URL and redirect to the original URL.
Now you can Log on with a Work user and start moving the goods.
There is more…
Within my next post I will discuss how to set up and maintain multiple instances of the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal.
I do hope you liked this post and will add value for you in your daily work as a professional. If you have related questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to use the Comment feature below.
That’s all for now. Till next time!
Original image by Ben Kerckx from Pixabay
Good job!
This is great post, but we are stuck with this installation. I just have following questions,
* We have single server environment, do we need to modify port in Webconfig file.
* What need to be the port for net.tcp://localhost:8201/DynamicsAx/Services/WHSMobileDevicesServices
* Our default TCP IP Port is 2714 , whereas WSDL Port is 8104
* We are getting error : Sorry, an error occurred while processing your request. Please retry your request or contact your system administrator. on clicking Log on to the mobile device
Hi Mustafa,
This error can occur if you have used an user account for the mobile devices portal which is not a user in Microsoft Dynamics AX, or this user has not the appropriate rights in AX.
You can look into the Windows event viewer for more details on the error. E.g. the next error could be logged when you have used a wrong user: “Object Server 01: An error has occurred in the services framework. Method: AifMessageInspector::AfterReceiveRequest. Error: System.ServiceModel.FaultException: Failed to logon to Microsoft Dynamics AX.”
André,
Thanks for response, we resolved the issue. The main problem was were using the old server R2 one. We un-installed R2 and installed R3 with contoso. Somehow setup was trying to connect to old R2 Ports, we update the web.config file with correct port and it worked.
Thanks
Installation completed smooth in AX2012R3, able to access the URL without any issues. When i login with the account it doesnt proceed further on the server. it still stays on the login screen.
Any ideas ????? Can you suggest.
Do you have any error messages? If so, please go to the Microsoft Dynamics community and add a forum question. (http:/community.dynamics.com)
Hi,
We are facing same issue. We tried all methods posted on this forum but still no luck.
1) While installing we gave 13500 as port, and updated it in web config file accordingly. 2)We also updated the username@domain field in the web config file. 3)We’ve also done the recommended settings in AX (WHM user role, creating a worker, assigning a default company). Could you please help us on this, we’ve been trying this from past few days.
Thanks in advance!
Sir,
This is very good post. I tried to configure it till IIS Manager. When ever i tied to open Mobile Device Portal I am getting error “HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable”. Can you please suggest where I am going wrong?
Thanks in advance
Manoj
Hi Manoj,
Please check if in the IIS application pool if the portal is running or in a stopped state. If stopped, try to start it. If you encounter errors, you can search in the Windows events for possible reasons.
Hi Andre,
We have created a customization related to creating transfer orders in AX through WMDP.
The code piece is working perfectly fine when we are testing it in AX using WHSWorkExecute form. But, when we try to access the same in the web browser, nothing works.
The requirement is to create transfer order lines on a transfer order based on certain validations. The form works fine in AX but while opening in the web browser, it does not take any data and refreshes the same screen again and again.
Is there any configuration that is missing? I would request if anyone can provide their input on this.
Hi Rohan,
you have asked the same question on the Dynamics community. I have provided my thoughts on this post: https://community.dynamics.com/ax/f/33/t/204367
kind regards,
André
Excellent information – and in spite of being a very old post, this info is still very relevant, because not everyone wants to migrate to F&O. It’s a shame the images directory or something got jacked, they would have been nice to tie the shoelace. 🙂 But well done either way.
Hi Robert,
Thanks for reporting the broken links to the images. I have replaced them. They are now visible again.
Thank you Andre! I actually came back to verify a thought I was having and was excited to see the images restored. Thank you for fixing it!
Robert