Category: DIXF

Simulating network “issues”

This post originally appeared on https://dynamicsnotes.com/simulating-network-issues/.

In some cases it is very useful to see how a web site would perform under certain network conditions that are worse than what you have currently. You can use this tool to simulate it: https://jagt.github.io/clumsy/. As an example, if you want to simulate what a network latency of 200ms looks like while using POS, run it on the same computer as POS and configure it with 200ms outbound.

Even if you are on a good network, with this tool you can evaluate what it would look like for someone with higher latency (or other network conditions).

Move POS screen layouts from one environment to another

Using the POS screen layout designer is a tedious work and very likely you would not want to do this in every environment over and over again (production, sandbox, dev, etc.). The solution to this (and similar tasks) is to use the DIXF framework to import and export entities. For this particular task of moving POS screen layouts, here are the steps to follow:

  1. Configure the data source
    1. Enter the “Data management” workspace
    2. Click on “Configure data source”
    3. Select “CSV-Unicode” and edit
    4. Set the “text qualifier” to ~ (tilde)
    5. Save the data source
  2. Export
    1. configure the data source as above
    2. Start a new export project with target data source set to “CSV-Unicode”
    3. Add the following entities:
      1. RetailImagesEntity (POS layout images)
      2. RetailButtonGridEntity (POS button grid)
      3. RetailButtonGridButtonsEntity (POS button grid buttons)
        1. Click “View map” and “Mapping details”
        2. Enable text qualifier for DisplayText and Save
      4. RetailTilllayoutEntity (POS screen layouts)
        1. follow same steps to edit “Mapping details” but enable text qualifier for all fields
      5. RetailTillLayoutZoneEntity (POS screen layout zones)
      6. RetailTillLayoutButtonGridZoneEntity (POS screen layout button grid zones)
      7. RetailTillLayoutImageZoneEntity (POS screen layout images zones)
      8. RetailTillLayoutReportZoneEntity (POS screen layout report zones)
    4. Download the package
  3. Import
    1. configure the data source as above
    2. Start a new import project and pick source data format “Package”
    3. Upload the package and import it

DIXF recurring file imports fail for data packages. What now?



Applicable to all AX7 releases.

If you are following https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/recurring-integrations/ to setup your recurring imports, and if you are trying to use a data package with multiple entities, you may notice that the server shows a “preprocessing failure”. This is a bug. Until this is fixed, a workaround is to over-layer the ApplicationFoundation:

Create a new class:

class DMFSchedulerStatusUpdate
{
    using Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Framework.Tools.DataManagement.Serialization;
    [DataEventHandler(tableStr(Batch), DataEventType::Updated)]
    public static void Batch_onUpdated(Common sender, DataEventArgs e)
    {
        Batch task = sender;
        if(task.Status == BatchStatus::Finished || task.Status == BatchStatus::Error && task.ClassNumber == className2Id(identifierStr(DMFImportTaskScheduler)))
        {
            container params = task.Parameters;
            DMFExecutionId executionId = conPeek(params,3);
            DMFIntegrationBridge::updateStatus_New(executionId);
        }
    }
}

Customize DMFIntegrationBridge:

public static void updateStatus_New(dmfExecutionId executionId)
{
    IntegrationActivityMessageTable messageStatusTable;
    IntegrationActivityRuntimeExecutionTable runtimeExecutionTable;
    select firstonly messageStatusTable
    join 
    runtimeExecutionTable where runtimeExecutionTable.ExecutionId == executionId && 
    runtimeExecutionTable.MessageIdentifier == messageStatusTable.MessageId;

    DMFIntegrationBridge bridge = new DMFIntegrationBridge();
    ActivityMessageContext ActivityMessageContext = new ActivityMessageContext();
    ActivityMessageContext.MessageId = guid2Str(messageStatusTable.MessageId);
    ActivityMessageContext.ExecutionCorrelationId = str2Guid(messageStatusTable.ExternalCorrelationId);
    // Get status for bridge result
    IntegrationBridgeResults bridgeResult = DMFIntegrationBridgeHelper::GetStateOfExecution(executionId, false);
    // Set post processing state
    bridge.postProcessMessage(ActivityMessageContext, executionId, bridgeResult);
}

 

DIXF recurring file downloads must be forced to be HTTPS



Applicable to all AX7 releases.

If you are following https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/recurring-integrations/ to setup your recurring exports, you may notice that the download URL that the dequeue call returns is wrong. This may be caused by the load balancer in a production environment. In any case, the client code that fetches the data can use simple code to solve the issue.  In C#, it would look like this:

var newDownloadLocation = new UriBuilder(dataMessage.DownloadLocation)
{
    Scheme = Uri.UriSchemeHttps,
    Port = -1,
};

Once the download URL is “fixed up”, download with a normal GET request.