Last year during the Directions EMEA 2013 they announced NAV 2013 R2 on Windows Azure in Office 365. It sounds very vague because there was not much details on this. The announcement contained two remarks:
- NAV 2013 R2 is certified for virtual machine on Windows Azure
- An Office 365 user can be used to login on NAV
As a fan of Windows Azure I liked it. Windows Azure Active Directory, or Active Directory of Office 365, already has a great use for Website/Apps etc, but now it also can be used for standard Business applications like NAV.
To start my trail I did a search on “NAV 2013 R2 Office 365” and you get the links below. In the short movie they show you the whole process. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/dynamics/nav/dn474204
More details and other great links can be found on: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nav/archive/2013/12/19/validating-single-sign-on-with-office-365-and-nav-2013-r2.aspx
On Windows Azure I created already a Virtual Machine with NAV 2013. I am not a NAV Consultant or developer, but my company Prodware is doing business with Dynamics products, so I wanted to know something about it. This environment was created as a personal playground. Handy those free Window Azure minutes with your MSDN subscription. I used this environment to get via OData data from NAV to show in my Windows 8 app.
NAV 2013 needed to be upgraded to NAV 2013 R2. Then a NAV user with a Office 365 account has to be added. The NAV services configuration needs some adjustments. Default the NAV installation is setup for Windows authentication and it must be changed to Access Control Service. This needs some certificates to be installed. The web.config of the WebClient also needs some adjustments, just like the CustomSettings.config and on IIS authentication must be Forms authentication.
Don’t forget the ports (8080, 80, 443, 7048, 7047, 7046 etc) added to the endpoints of your Virtual machine. Otherwise NAV and the WebClient are unavailable external.
In the Windows Azure Active directory configuration we add an Application. Different EndPoints are created and some need to be added to your NAV Configuration.
When everything is done, go to the URL http://<server>.cloudapp.net:8080/DynamicsNAV71/WebClient (unless you changed the defaults). My server is named mynavvm. With DNS assignments it can be changed to your own domain .
After this the well known Office 365 sign in form appears.
Fill in the credentials. Tada!
Super handy!
Some problems I had:
- forgot some ports in de VM endpoints
- certificate needed to be on more places in the CERTMGR, the documentation was complete
- IIS has to changed from Windows Authentication to Forms Authentication.
- I first found the movie and much later the Blog.