Enterprise Portal authentication in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 – Finally something that makes sense!

In AX 2012 there is a new authentication terminology - Pluggable authentication. This type of authentication allows users who are not part of Active Directory access to the AX 2012 Enterprise Portal.

In a nutshell, AX 2012 integrates with SharePoint Pluggable Authentication, which provides authentication to external Enterprise Portal users that are not part of an organization's Active Directory.

Further, Pluggable Authentication provides an administrator three additional forms of authentication in addition to Active Directory:

1.       Active Directory Federated Service: Allows users who are associated with an external Active Directory to access Enterprise Portal.

a.       When an ADFS user is removed from the external Active Directory that user does not have access to Enterprise Portal.

2.       Forms Based Authentication: Allows users to authenticate against a custom database of users.

3.       Live Id: Users can authenticate to Enterprise Portal by using Windows Live Id.

See the following diagram:

For more information on the new Enterprise Portal changes in AX 2012 visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg845087.aspx#BKMKPluggableAuth

In addition, Brandon George has a really good post about the new Security Architecture in his blog, Check it out

http://dynamics-ax.blogspot.com/2011/06/microsoft-dynamics-ax-2012-security.html

Take care!

make friendly URL’s for your SharePoint 2010 site in 4 steps with IIS7 URL Rewrite module

I started developing an Internet facing site with the help of this book : http://www.amazon.com/Professional-SharePoint-Branding-Interface-Programmer/dp/0470584645/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300888674&sr=1-12#_

However, for me SEO is critical nowadays and this book did not give me any information on how to make my Share Point 2010 Internet facing site URL friendly. Because I'm an ASP.NET developer, I knew that now we have the URL Rewrite module in IIS7 and I wondered if I could apply it to a Share Point site as well.

I found this great post that explains how to achieve Share Point 2010 friendly URL by using the II7 URL Rewrite module.

http://blog.mastykarz.nl/friendly-urls-sharepoint-site-4-steps-iis7-url-rewrite-module/

After following the steps stated in the above link, I was able to produce a friendly URL.