Security Diagnostics

When you want to configure or develop custom security in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, you would possibly want to know the menu item name which is being used. There are options to trackback all information in the AOT in Visual Studio. But how to get the information if you don’t have access to Visual Studio and only are able to access the application? This question will be answered in this blog post.

Security diagnostics

There are several different menu item types in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations:

  • Display – This type is used for opening forms in the web browser
  • Action – This type is used to start periodic tasks or update processes
  • Output – This type is used to start reports

When starting a list page or form, usually, you will see the used menu item in the URL of your browser. This is not happening when the form is opened from another form.

When you have opened a form, there is an option to start Security Diagnostics. It will help you find related roles, duties and privileges. You can even change the security configuration on runtime using this option. Also, you can find menu item information when you open the Form information.

When you start a report or periodic process, there is no option to look at the URL, open the Security diagnostics or get the information using the form information. The information seems to be hidden in the application.

Task recordings

To be able to get all information, you can start task recordings and save it e.g. on your local machine. When you open the task recording in the form Security diagnostics for task recordings (System administration > Security), you will notice that not all menu items recorded are shown in this form. The menu items of type Action and Output are missing, unfortunately.
Note that for this missing option, I did create an idea on the Dynamics experience portal: Improve security diagnostics for task recordings. You may vote to make this idea more important. Then Microsoft might pickup this idea for future application improvements.

To be able to get the answer today, you can analyze the details of the task recording files as it is actually recorded and stored in the recording. The AXTR file extension is a compressed file with some xml files which contains all details. I will explain this with an example below

Example analyse AXTR file

To be able to analyze a file, you first need to create a recording. In my example, I have opened a normal form, a report and also a periodic tasks from the System administration menu. The report which was started, is Role to user assignments. I have saved the recording on my local machine.

You can either rename this file to a file name with the ZIP extension or directly unzip the AXTR file.

Now you can open the file Recording.xml to read all details which were recorded and find the report menu item.

There is more

When you have larger files or menu items with a similar label, it would be a bit harder to find the correct menu item. To ease your life, you can open the file with the name recording_resource.xml which will show you all recorded steps supported with a GUID-ID.

You can copy this value and then search in the file Recording.xml for this reference. It will show you directly the recorded details.



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!

6 replies
  1. Raman Thatikunta
    Raman Thatikunta says:

    Thank you for an excellent article. How do you find the associated privilege once you’ve figured out the menu item object identifier?

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

      Hi Raman,

      In Visual Studio, you can open the menu item in the designer mode. Then you can Right click on the menu item and View related roles. You can also search for references to find the related privileges.

      Reply

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