Category Archives: Azure
Setting Up Business Central On-Premise (BC-230) on a Virtual Machine
Introduction: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (formerly known as Microsoft Dynamics NAV) is a comprehensive business management solution that helps organizations streamline their financials, supply chain, sales, and customer service processes. It offers robust features for managing various aspects of your business, from inventory control to financial reporting. In this blog post, we’ll focus on the steps to download and install Business Central on-premises within a virtual machine. Whether you’re a developer, IT administrator, or business user, understanding this process is essential for setting up a local environment to explore and work with Business Central. Pre-requisites: Steps: 2. Choose the region for the business central 3. Extract the downloaded file. 4. Go to the extracted file and click on setup. 5. Choose Advanced Installation Options -> Choose an Installation Option -> Custom. 6. Make all the listed components available (Run from My Computer) or (Run all from My Computer). 7. Make the necessary changes. 8. Go to Azure Portal and assign the DNS Name in Azure Portal. 9. After the successfully installation, go to Windows PowerShell ISE -> “Run as Administrator” and execute the below commands line by line. Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Force Import-Module ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central\230\Service\NavAdminTool.ps1’; Get-NAVServerConfiguration -ServerInstance BC230 Set-NAVServerConfiguration -KeyName EnableDebugging -KeyValue true Set-NAVServerConfiguration -KeyName DeveloperServicesEnabled -KeyValue true Restart-NAVServerInstance -ServerInstance BC230 Get-NAVServerUser BC230 Set-NavServerUser -Company ‘CRONUS International Ltd.’ Note: Upon executing the New-SelfAssingedCertificate command, a Thumbprint will be generated. Please retain the thumbprint ID for your reference. New-SelfSignedCertificate -DnsName “www.shubhazure.eastus.cloudapp.azure.com” -CertStoreLocation “Cert:\LocalMachine\My” 10. After creation/installation of Certificate, Go to Manage Computer Certificates > right-click on the Certificate > All Tasks>Manage Private Keys > Add NETWORK SERVICE and allow access to all the users and copy the certificate to Enterprise Trust, Trusted People, Trusted Publisher and Trust Devices folder. 11. Go to IIS Manager in that BC230 -> click on Browse “:8080 (http)”. 12. Change Credential Type and Add Thumbprint Set-NAVServerConfiguration -KeyName ServicesCertificateThumbprint -KeyValue Set-NAVServerConfiguration -KeyName ClientServicesCredentialType -KeyValue NavUserPassword 13. Change the Credential Type in navsettings.json file: This tells Business Central Clients to change the CredentialTypes for the Client. Goto C:\inetpub\wwwroot\<WEB SERVER INSTANCE>\navsettings.json 14. Go to Users in Business Central, insert the Password: 15. Binding your Web Server Instance with SSL / Self-Signed Certificate in IIS: 16. Restart the Server Instance in Business Central Administration and Webserver instance in IIS. Result After inserting the credentials, you will get access to Business Central. Conclusion Thus, in this blog we saw how to download Business Central (BC230) on Virtual Machine. We hope you found this article useful and if you would like to discuss anything you can reach out to us at transform@cloudfonts.com.
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Tenant Creation and User Permissions for Business Central using Azure Portal
Introduction: Creating a tenant in Microsoft Entra-ID or Azure Active Directory (AAD) is a simple process that can be accomplished through the Azure portal. The portal serves as a centralized hub for managing Azure Active Directory and executing various administrative tasks, including the creation of a new tenant. Additionally, this blog will cover how to create a user and grant them permissions. Pre-requisites: Steps: Sign in to Azure Portal. Navigate to Microsoft Entra ID tenants: Select “Create”: Choose the type of tenant: On the Basics tab, select the type of tenant you want to create: Click Next: Configuration to proceed. Provide the necessary information: Organization name: Type your desired organization name (e.g., “Cloudfronts”). Initial domain name: Choose an initial domain name (e.g., “cfblogs”). Country/Region: Select your desired country or leave it as the United States. Review and create: Your new tenant is created: Check your user account: User can change their User Principal Name (which is generated by the system) by clicking on user e.g. “Shubham Prajapati” Now Sign in to Business Central Business Central Sign In | Microsoft Dynamics 365 Now put the User principal name As password was not set during tenant creation. Go to > Forgot Password After setting up the password you can successfully login to your Business Central Now Go to Settings > Admin Center Now Click on Upper Left Corner > Admin Go to Active Users > Click on the user which you want to give permission to access central, then go to Licenses and apps and select Licenses > Save changes Once permission is provided Go to Users page in business central and click on Update users from Microsoft Now the user is being updated, to give environment permission click on the user whom you want to give permission To give environment permission to user click on New Line > Select appropriate permission to user Conclusion Thus, in this blog we saw how to create a tenant for business central and how to add users and give permissions to them. Thank you for reading hope this helps!
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How to create Virtual Machine on Azure Portal?
Introduction: A virtual machine (VM) is like a computer within a computer. It’s software that emulates a physical computer, allowing you to run multiple operating systems and applications on a single physical machine. VMs are useful for testing software, running different operating systems simultaneously, isolating applications, and consolidating hardware resources. They provide flexibility, scalability, and cost savings by reducing the need for physical hardware and allowing for more efficient resource utilization. Pre-requisites: Configuration: To create a Virtual Machine using Azure Portal Go to Azure Portal and sign in with your credentials. Once you are signed in, you will see the Azure Portal dashboard. This dashboard is customizable and can be tailored to your needs. To create a new resource, click on the Create a resource button on the left-hand side of the dashboard. You will be taken to this page where you can select the type of resource you want to create. Choose the appropriate resource type and follow the prompts to create it. To create a Virtual Machine, select that and enter required credentials. After the deployment is complete click on “Go to resource”. Click on Connect and download the RDP File. Now the Virtual Machine is created. To start the Virtual Machine, Click on Select > Start VM Then go to downloads and click on the downloaded RDP File > Connect. Enter the password which you had entered while the creation of Virtual Machine. Conclusion Thus, in this blog we saw how to create virtual machine and how to setup Business Central on Virtual Machine. Thank you!
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Configure an Azure Connector in LCS
Introduction In this blog, we’ll be looking into configuring the Azure Connector in LCS with the Azure Resource Manager so that LCS can deploy your resources to Azure. Pre-requisites An Azure subscription that you are a co-administrator in. References Configuration Go to Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services and log in with your account. In LCS, when we try to create a cloud hosted environment for the first time, it prompts us to create an Azure Connector first. You can also access this by going to your Project Settings and the “Azure Connectors.” Once, we reach this screen, we have to click on Authorize in the organization where we want to authorize. Please do ensure your account has the necessary permissions for these actions. Once, this is done click on Microsoft Azure Portal as there are a few configurations we need to do in the Azure Portal. Click on Subscriptions. From the Subscriptions list, we can note down the Subscription ID as we will need it while creating the Azure Connector. The “Subscription ID” is also available in the Overview section of the Subscription. Then go to the Access Control (IAM) tab and click on Add and then Add Role Assignment. Then go to Role -> Privileged Administrator Roles and then search for “Contributor”. Click on it and then click on Next. In the members tab, click on User, group or Service Principal and click on Select Members. After that search for and add “Dynamics Deployment Services [wsfed-enabled]” and your own user to this role assignment. Once that is done, we’ll get a confirmation message. After that, we can move back to the LCS for configuring the Azure Connector. We click on Add to create a new Azure Connector and get the following pop-up. Here we add a name for the connector, Azure Subscription ID and the Domain Name. Name can be anything that you want, the Domain Name in most cases is the part of your email address after the @. For e.g. it’d be “microsoft.com” in case of rbansode@microsoft.com. For the Azure Subscription ID, we have already stored that from the previous steps. Once we add the necessary values and click on next we get the following pop-up. We’ve already completed the necessary steps in the Azure Portal so we can simply click on Next. After that, we get the following pop-up. We’ve completed the steps mentioned in the Ensure you are a subscription user section. If for some reason you are facing any difficulties in that you can also try the steps from the Apply a Subscription Tag section. Apply a subscription tag When you click on Get a Code you’ll get the following pop-up which includes a unique verification code. We copy this and head on to the Azure Portal. Then go to your subscription in Azure Portal. Head to the Tags section and create a new entry with name as “LifecycleServicesAuthCode” and the value as unique verification code from LCS. If neither of those methods work, there is a soon to be deprecated method mentioned as well where you upload the certificate downloaded from LCS into the “Management Certificates” of your Azure Subscription. Hopefully, one of these three methods work out for you and you’ll get the following pop-up. Once you click on connect you’ll see an entry created in your Azure Connectors. This indicates that your Azure Account has been linked and now LCS can utilize it to create resources in Azure on your behalf. Side Note If you see the following error message then that means there was an error with one of the three suggested approaches you choose. You can try with another approach and start over. Conclusion Thus, we saw how to configure the Azure Connector in LCS. Happy Coding!
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AS2 using Logic App
High-level steps to start building B2B logic app workflows: Creating a Key Vault for Certificate and Private Key Create an Azure Key vault. In the next step, Select Vault access policy and select the Users. Select Review + Create. Add the access policy and assign it to Azure Logic App. Create Certificate Click the Certificate and Download Create a Key and attach the .pfx format file. Creating two Integration Account for adding Partners, Agreements and Certificates Create 2 integration accounts, one for sender and one for receiver. Add the Sender and Receiver Partners in both the integration accounts. Add a public certificate in sender integration account and a private certificate in receiver integration account. Now we need to add the agreement in both sender and receiver integration account. Sender Agreement Send Settings Receiver Agreement Receive Settings Creating two Logic Apps, one for Sending (Encoded Message) and one for Receiving (Decoded Message) Create two logic apps and add the integration account in respective logic apps. Logic App for Sender (Encoding Message) Logic App for Receiver (Decoding Message)
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Salesforce Integration using Azure Integration Services
In this Blog, it shows the detailed information for integration between SAP B1 to Salesforce. The AIS Interface is intended to Extract, Transform and Route the data from SAPB1 to Salesforce. The steps for integration would be same for different entities. Event Scenario Pre-Requisites: Process Steps: On Demand Load Scenario Pre-Requisites: Process Steps Based on the above Integration scenarios Azure Developer can easily navigate for the integration implementation and they can choose between Event Driven or On-Demand based on the business requirement. We are just getting started with Azure Integration Services and stay tuned for more in this series.
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Deploying resources using Azure Resource Manager (ARM)
Azure Resource Manager is a management platform for Azure resources. It enables you to deploy, manage, and monitor resources on Azure, including virtual machines, web apps, and SQL databases. Some key features of Azure Resource Manager include: Resource groups: You can use resource groups to group related resources together and manage them as a single unit. Templates: You can use Azure Resource Manager templates to deploy and manage resources consistently and predictably. Templates are written in JSON and allow you to define the infrastructure for your application. Role-based access control: You can use Azure Resource Manager to set fine-grained permissions on resources so that only authorized users can access them. To use Azure Resource Manager, you can use the Azure portal, the Azure Resource Manager APIs, or the Azure CLI. Resource providers: Azure Resource Manager works with resource providers to create, manage, and delete resources. Each resource provider offers a set of resources that you can use, such as virtual machines, storage accounts, and databases. Resource Manager model: Azure Resource Manager uses a declarative model, which means that you define what you want your resources to look like, and Azure Resource Manager takes care of creating and configuring them for you. This is in contrast to an imperative model, where you have to specify the exact steps to create and configure a resource. Locking resources: You can use Azure Resource Manager to lock resources to prevent accidental deletion or modification. This is useful if you have resources that are critical to your application or business. Auditing and tagging: You can use Azure Resource Manager to audit changes to resources and to apply tags to resources for the organization and cost management.Example of an Azure Resource Manager template that creates a virtual machine: I hope this helps!
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Backup Azure DevOps Git Repositories
Here we will see how to backup the repository using the YAML file. This includes the following steps Create an Azure DevOps Personal Access Token (PAT) Create a YAML file Create Subscription Connection Create an Azure DevOps Personal Access Token (PAT) Step 1: Sign in to your Azure DevOps Portal Step 2: Go to Personal Access Token Step 3: Create a Token by clicking on “New Token“ Give it a name Select the “Read” checkbox to fetch the repository Click on Create Note: Copy and Save the token as you will not be able to see it again Create a YAML Pipeline Step 1: Go to Pipelines Step 2: Choose Azure Repos Git Step 3: Select your repository Step 4: Configure it as a starter Pipeline Below is the default code you will see. Trigger: The wildcard (*) will monitor all the branches, the pipeline will be triggered whenever you have any changes in your repository CmdLine: The command calls “git clone –mirror ” to make a copy of your repository. PAT needed to be used while fetching a repository Archive Files: It will take the git repository which was cloned in the previous step and then zipped to “Backup.zip” File Copy: It will take the archive copy and send it to Azure Blob Storage Creating a Subscription Connection Step 1: Go to Project Settings Step 2: Go to Service connections Step 3: Click on New service connection Step 4: Choose Azure Resource Manager Step 5: Select Authentication Method as Service Principal (automatic) Note: Make sure to use the same credentials to login to DevOps as in Azure Portal Step 6: Subscription will be chosen automatically. Give it a name Select a resource group where you have your storage account Then save Step 7: Use the connection name in YAML. Save and Run It will create a Job See the status of the Job After Job gets completed, you will see a zip file in your blob
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Import an API and all its operations using its documentation in Azure API Management
Most of the time you would need to import an entire API collection with all of its supported operations to mask all of them or set policies on them. This can be easily done using Azure API management service. To start, log in to your Azure Portal, head over to the API management resource, and go to the API section on the left. From the options, select OpenAPI definition. Here I will use the Pet store API, https://petstore.swagger.io/ Go to the site or the site where your API stores the collection of all supported operations in JSON format. You can either have the JSON file of the collection or a website. In the OpenAPI specification put the link to your JSON collection or upload the JSON file and fill in the rest of the details and click on the Create button. You can see the list of operations appear. Hope you enjoyed this blog!
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Mask your APIs using Azure API management
Most of the time you don’t want to show the original API URL or want to hide the original URL for security purposes in your code. This can be easily achieved if we assign this original URL to some other URL so end users can’t find out what’s the original API. So let’s see how this can be achieved. First, log in to your Azure Portal. Search for Azure API management service and create a new resource. Select the desired azure region and resource group. Give a unique name for this resource as the API URL will be based on this. For testing purposes set the Pricing tier as Developer. Proceed through the rest of the options as default and create the resource. Make sure to grab a coffee as the deployment takes around 45 minutes to 1 hour and you will see this screen only. When the deployment completes, you will receive an email, alerting you that the process is complete. Click on ‘Go to resource’ from the Deployment screen. You can find the new URL by getting inside the resource. Now let’s add a sample API so that we can mask it. In this case, I will use https://catfact.ninja/fact this api gives us random facts about cats. Go to the API section on your API management resource. Select the HTTP option, so that we can manually define this API and fill in the details Now save this API, you can see it on the left pane. Next, we have to add an operation for this API. Select GET operation and place the request to the main URL. In this case, the request was /fact We can test this API through the test tab and as you can see it’s working. Now we will use the main URL which will be used to mask the original API. As you can see this is not working. This happens as each API needs to be bound with a product. Go through the Products section and choose unlimited. ‘Starter’ has a rate limit of 5 calls per 60 seconds, The ‘Unlimited’ policy does not have this limitation. Click on ‘Add API’. Select your API. You will get a notification saying the API has been added to a product. Now to view this API we need a subscription, head over to the settings section on the left pane, disable the required subscription option, and then save it. Now again hit our main API through a browser, as you can see it’s working. I hope this blog helped you 🙂