Within my previous post I explained how to install the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal (WMDP). This post will go one step further and will guide you on installing the portal for using mobile devices in warehouses of multiple legal entities. At the end of this post there are some additional facts.

When you have multiple companies in you enterprise, it could be the case that you need to use mobile devices in warehouses for these companies. When you run the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal, there is no option to change the company within the portal or even do these settings in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3. As written in my previous post, the WMDP will be setup with an internal AX user which has a default company setup.

So if you setup multiple internal users, you can use each user for linking the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal to the appropriate company.

Setup portal on one or more servers?

Depending on the capacity of your initial IIS server used for the WMDP and the load the use of the portals will give you, you have to install another instance on another machine. I have not done testing on the load. I cannot provide you with sizing details as I used all functionality on one virtual machine. Setup on a separate server is exactly like the setup as described in my previous article. To connect you have to provide the new machine name and a port number for the connection. As it is another machine, you could use the same port number on several machines.

Personally I think it is more interesting to know if it is possible to setup multiple instances of the portal on one single server and how. Well, let’s start…

You have to run the Microsoft Dynamics AX Setup and select the option Add or modify components.

WMDP2-02

When you arrive at the Add or modify components step, you will notice that some options are selected and disabled for editing. These components are already installed on the machine and cannot have more than one instance.

The Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal has already been installed, but the option is available so it is possible to setup multiple instances. Enable the option and click Next to continue.

On configure the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal tab you have to specify the User name which is linked to another default company. The website port must be different than the previous used port number(s). In my previous installation I used port 13500. So now I will use 13501 which is not used for other purposes.

When you have completed the setup steps, you can open the Internet Information Server Manager to see the new installed application.

The naming convention is different from the first instance. When you setup a third instance it will continue with increasing the instance number.

The website application is referring to a directory on the server.

You can see the new instance created as another subdirectory in the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal folder. After you had completed the setup you can directly use the new instance on a mobile device.

There is more…

If you take a look in the website files, you will notice that all files are present in both instance folders. So when you customized e.g. the CSS style sheet or added a new one, in the first instance, you have to copy these files also to the other instances to have them available. This also applies for modified ASP.NET Server Pages (*.aspx) and all other files.

To have a better overview of the Warehouse applications in the IIS Manager it is possible to rename them. You could use the company ID as recognition like the example below:

After renaming the site name, you don’t have to restart or reset services. Why did I keep the instance number in the site name? If you think you know the answer you may leave a comment. I will explain it in a next post…



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!

9 replies
  1. Ernest Wensink
    Ernest Wensink says:

    Hi André,

    Thanks for your explanation! I have followed the steps, but instead of a second instance, a second website is created for the default instance.
    Any idea how to solve this?

    Best regards,
    Ernest

    Reply
    • André Arnaud de Calavon
      André Arnaud de Calavon says:

      Hi Ernest,
      Thanks for reading the blog and your comment. Unfortunately I do not completely understand what you mean with the “second website for the default instance”. Can you elaborate on this? Do you now have two websites referring to the same company? Can you tell the steps you have done to install the second portal?

      André

      Reply
  2. Ernest Wensink
    Ernest Wensink says:

    Hi André,
    The steps are exactly the same as in your example to setup multiple instances. I will send you a screenshot of the 2 web sites for 1 instance by e-mail.
    In the mean time, I noticed that the system has created a temporary profile for me during login. The system administrator will investigate this.
    Do you know if something is saved in the User profile during installation?
    I can’t look at the details of the second website anymore, because it’s deleted (by me).
    Regards, Ernest

    Reply
    • André Arnaud de Calavon
      André Arnaud de Calavon says:

      Hi Ernest,

      I have read your mail and have seen the screen shots. It is really strange you got the second site with the current instance. Probably the user profile could indeed have some settings which are now not available or something like that. I have not encountered this before. I have seen some strange habits with roaming profiles in the past, but I’m not a Windows adminisrator.

      The message on the portal could be related to missing setup in the form Work Users mobile device display settings or a user in the setup not known in AX. You could have a look at events on the IIS and AOS server for further details.

      Reply
  3. Paul Policarpio
    Paul Policarpio says:

    Hi Guys,

    I just want to ask how to install multiple instances of WMDP on different Environment(DEv & Test)??

    Thanks,
    Best Regards.
    Paul Policarpio

    Reply
    • André Arnaud de Calavon
      André Arnaud de Calavon says:

      Hi Paul,
      You can install the instances on the DEV or TEST application server. If you install the WMDP on another machine, you need to change the web.config file to be able to connect to a specific AOS.

      Reply
  4. Jurgen van Zeeland
    Jurgen van Zeeland says:

    Hi André,

    Looking at your reply to Paul I assume it is not possible (or recommended ?) to install multiple instances of WMDP for difference AX environments (like TEST and DEV) on the same Server ?

    Reply
    • André Arnaud de Calavon
      André Arnaud de Calavon says:

      Hi Jurgen,
      Thanks for reading my blog. You can install the WMDP (also multiple instances) on any machine. If there is no reference found for an AX AOS, you need to specify the connection in the web.config file. If there is one machine hosting several AOS machines (e.g. DEV and TEST), you can install multiple instances, but also need to take care of the connection in the web.config file. The recommendation is to find out if the machine has enough resources to run the WMDP smoothly without limitations like insufficient CPU or memory.

      Reply
      • Jurgen van Zeeland
        Jurgen van Zeeland says:

        Thanks Andre. I just wanted to be sure and nowhere it is stated this works but based on the technology and documentation I assumed it should work (and of course you need to change the web.config). So I just installed the second instance and will install the 3rd later tonight 🙂 This is a OTA environment where enough resources are available and performance is not the main priority (customer decision). And like mentioned before : in the event viewer you can always see why the portal does not work as expected (if that happens) .. I already has issues 2 times before which were easy to fix by looking at the info from event viewer (did not had the user in AX once and a reference to the AOS was wrong in another setup ..). Thanks again and keep on the good work (I really like articles/blogs and those of your colleagues)

        Reply

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