What are Integration ports?
Integrations ports are basically the inbound or outbound ports through
which external applications can communicate with Dynamics AOS via AIF (WCF).
The exchange of data between
External/Internal application is divided into:
1. InBound Exchange
a. Both Basic and Enhanced Integration ports can be used.
b. Basically to Receive data and create in Ax
2. OutBound Exchange
a. Only Enhanced Integration ports can be used.
b. To Send data to ext. applications
c. To Send data to ext. applications in response to their Requests
How to: Create a Basic Inbound
Integration Port [AX 2012]
Basic port is used to test the
operation of a custom service that does not require any data processing or
exposure to the Internet.
Only a developer can create a new basic integration port
To create a basic inbound port
1.
Open the Application Object Tree
(AOT).
2.
Right-click the Service
Groups node, and then click New Service Group.
3.
Right-click the new service group,
and then click Properties. Set the Name property
to TestBasicPortServiceGroup. Click Save.
4.
Right-click TestBasicPortServiceGroup,
and then click Open New Window. Drag one of the custom services from
the Services node onto TestBasicPortServiceGroup.
5.
Right-click TestBasicPortServiceGroup,
and then click Save.
6.
Right-click TestBasicPortServiceGroup,
and then click Deploy Service Group.
7.
After the service group is
successfully deployed, a confirmation message appears in the Infolog. And the TestBasicPortServiceGroup port
is appended to the Port Names list as a port of
the Basic type.
8.
To view the basic port you have
created, open the Inbound ports form. Click System
administration > Setup > Services and Application
Integration Framework >Inbound ports.
The TestBasicPortServiceGroup port appears in the Port
Names list as a port of the Basic type.
Important: To start this service every time that the AOS is restarted, set
the AutoDeploy property for the service group to Yes.
How to manage the Enhanced integration port:
#1: To create an enhanced integration port, follow these steps.
1. To create an inbound integration port, open the Inbound ports form. Click System administration > Setup > Services and Application
Integration Framework > Inbound ports.
–or–
To create an outbound integration port, open the Outbound ports form. Click System administration > Setup > Services and Application
Integration Framework > Outbound ports.
2. Click New.
3. Enter a name and description for the new integration port. The name of a port must begin with a letter and can contain only
alphanumeric characters.
4. Configure the integration port
Click service operations – to select Service operations which you want to
perform using this Enchanced port.
Close Select service operations form.
5. Or just click Close to save the default configuration and you can modify
the configuration later.
6. Click button Activate
Important:
If you activate or deactivate an integration port, all integration ports on
that particular instance of AOS are reactivated. Do not click the Deactivate/Activate button while integration ports are
processing messages.
#2: To Edit or delete an enhanced integration port, follow these steps:
To change the settings for an existing enhanced integration port, or to delete
the port, you must first deactivate the port.
1. Identify and select the particular Port name field you want to change or
delete.
2. Click Deactivate to deactivate the port.
3. Change the configuration settings.
–or–
Click Delete to delete the port.
4. Click Activate to reactivate the integration port.
#3: Configure addresses for Enhanced Integration ports:
Enhanced integration ports use adapters to enable Microsoft Dynamics AX
to communicate by using various transport protocols.
The addresses of integration ports are defined by the adapters that you select
and the Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) of the adapters.
Inbound integration ports have an inbound address that is used for inbound
messages, and they can also have a response address that is used for outbound
messages.
Outbound integration ports have only an outbound address that is used for
outbound messages.
How to Register Adapaters:
An adapter must be registered before it can be used. Adapters that are
included with Microsoft Dynamics AX are automatically registered during
installation.
Whenever a new adapter is added to the (AOT), you must register the
adapter to make it available in the configuration forms for enhanced
integration ports.
To register adapters, follow these steps:
1. Click System administration > Setup > Checklists >
Initialization checklist.
2. Expand the Initialize system node.
3. Click Set up Application Integration Framework. By doing so, Adapters, basic ports, and services are registered. This
operation can take some time to be completed.
How to select Adapaters:
After adapters have been registered, you must select the adapters that
you want to use for integration.
In the Address group or the Response address group, click the arrow in
the Adapter field, and then select an adapter in the list.
The list by default consists of:
1. File system adapter – Receive or Send
2. HTTP – Send and receive
3. ISABEL SEPA credit transfer – Receive or Send
4. MSMQ – Receive or Send
5. NetTcp – Send and receive
You can select the appropriate
adapter for your connection when you configure an enhanced integration port.
How to Specify URIs
Before you can configure an adapter, you must specify its URI. The
format of the URI varies, depending on the type of adapter that you selected:
1. For File system adapter and:
a. Address is an inbound address then the URI is the file system path of
the directory where the port retrieves documents.
b. And if the address is an outbound/response address, the URI is the file
system path of the directory where the port saves documents.
To select a directory, click the arrow in the URI field, and then browse to a
folder.
Notes: Make sure that the service account
for Application Object Server (AOS) has the appropriate read or write
permissions for the directory.
When you submit multiple documents to a port that uses the file system
adapter, the documents are processed in order based on the file names. (Workaround
if needed, is to use file names that include a sequencing scheme, such as
"PO_0001" and "PO_0002")
2. For NetTcp adapter, the URI is automatically provided by Microsoft
Dynamics AX, based on the port name. You can
view the URI after you save the port configuration.
3. For MSMQ adapter, the URI is based on the queue that you select. To select a queue, click the arrow in the URI field, and then select a
queue in the list.
The server must be configured to provide Message Queuing services, and queues
must be defined before they can be used by the integration port.
4. For HTTP adapter type is HTTP, the URI is the Internet address of a
website that you added by using the Web sites form. To select a website, click the arrow in the URI field. Then, in the
Select Web site form, click the arrow in the Web site field, and then select a
website in the list.
How to Configure adapters:
After you specify the URI of the adapter that you selected, you can
configure the adapter.
In the Address group or the Response address group, click Configure. In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2, for adapter types other than NetTcp,
to make the Configure AOS button visible you must save the port first.
One of the following configuration forms opens:
1. For the file system adapter, the File system adapter configuration form
opens. The Microsoft Dynamics AX user
account that is specified should have required rights. For example,
User Account Control (UAC) is enabled in Windows, and files are created by an
administrator account. For these files, the Owner attribute in the file
properties is set to the Windows Administrators group. Similarly, for files
that are created from a process that runs on a network service, the owner is
set to NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE.
2. For NetTcp, HTTP, and MSMQ adapters which are based on Windows
Communication Foundation (WCF), the WCF configuration form opens.
The WCF configuration form contains the WCF Configuration Editor tool,
SvcConfigEditor.exe, if the tool is installed. This tool is installed as a
component of some versions of the Windows SDK and by Microsoft Visual Studio
2010. This tool provides a graphical user interface (GUI) that you can use to
create and modify configuration settings for WCF services.
If the WCF Configuration Editor tool is not installed, the WCF
configuration file opens in Notepad. You can change the WCF configuration
information by modifying the XML code in Notepad. Then save the file.