Microsoft Dynamics AX

EmpowerID provides connectors for a wide range of user directories and resource systems. As an administrator, you can use these connectors to quickly connect EmpowerID to your organization's identity-aware systems and applications. When you do so, you create an account store for that application in the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse and use that account store to configure how you want EmpowerID to manage the identity information in that system.

EmpowerID Dynamics AX connector allows organizations to bring the user data in their Dynamics AX system to EmpowerID, where it can be managed and synchronized with data in any connected back-end user directories. Once connected, you can manage this data from EmpowerID in the following ways:

Provision new users
Edit user attributes
Delete users

Additionally, EmpowerID provides Provisioning policies or Resource Entitlements (RETs) that allow you to automatically provision DAX accounts for any person within your organization based on your policy requirements. For more information on RETs and DAX, see Creating Provisioning Policies for Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Prerequisites

In order to connect EmpowerID to Dynamics AX, you need to have a Dynamics AX server with the Dynamics AX client installed. In addition, you need to have the installer for the EmpowerID Dynamics AX Web services. This installer is a separate package that needs to be requested from EmpowerID.

This topic demonstrates how to connect EmpowerID to Microsoft Dynamics AX and is divided into the following activities:

Installing the EmpowerID Dynamics AX Web Services
Connecting EmpowerID to your Dynamics AX User directory
Configuring the Dynamics AX Account Store in EmpowerID
Connecting EmpowerID to your Dynamics AX Worker directory

Before connecting EmpowerID to a directory system, you should determine whether you want EmpowerID to provision Person objects from the user accounts it discovers in the account store. If you do, then you should be able to answer the following questions before turning on inventory.

When do you want EmpowerID to provision Person objects for those user accounts? At inventory or at a later point in time using the Account Inbox (recommended)?
If inventory provisioning is desired, in what Business Role and Location should those Person objects be placed?
How many user accounts can one Person have in the account store?
If people can have more than one user account in the account store, do you want EmpowerID to attempt to automatically join any user accounts meeting the conditions of your Join rules to an existing Person during inventory?
Do you want attribute flow to occur between EmpowerID and the account store? If so, what rules do you want to apply?
If you have Resource Entitlement policies in place, do you want EmpowerID to apply them to the account store?

To install the EmpowerID Dynamics AX Web Service

On your Dynamics AX server, double-click the Dynamics AX WebServices X.X.X.X msi to launch the EmpowerID Dynamics AX Services Setup wizard.
Click Next to begin the installation.
Select the terms of the license agreement and click Next.
Select the destination folder and click Next.
Click Install.

EmpowerID installs the service and opens the EmpowerID DAX Configuration window. You use this window to set the application identity and installation configuration information needed by EmpowerID to communicate with the service.
In the Application Identity pane of the EmpowerID DAX Configuration window, do the following:
1. Type the user name and password of the service identity in the Username and Password fields, respectively. These credentials need to be those of a DAX administrator with read and write permissions to the DAX database.
2. Select the Web site for the service from the Web Site drop-down. You can keep the default selection or choose another.
3. Leave the Application field as is.
In the Dyanamics AX Installation Configuration pane of the EmpowerID DAX Configuration window, do the following:
1. Click the Ellipses (...) for the Business Connector dll field, browse to the bin folder of your Dynamics AX installation (located by default at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Client\Bin") and select BusinessConnectorNet.dll DLL.
2. Click the Ellipses (...) for the Dynamics Utility dll field, browse to the bin folder of your Dynamics AX installation (located by default at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Client\Bin") and select AXUtilLib.dll.
3. Click the Ellipses (...) for the Dynamics Powershell dll field, browse to the bin folder of your Dynamics AX installation (located by default at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Client\Bin") and select AXUtilLib.Powershell.dll.
4. Click the Ellipses (...) for the Dynamics Administration dll field, browse to the bin folder of your Dynamics AX installation (located by default at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Client\Bin") and select Microsoft.Dynamics.Administration.dll.
5. Click the Ellipses (...) for the Dynamics Management dll field, browse to the bin folder of your Dynamics AX installation (located by default at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics AX\60\Client\Bin") and select Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Framework.Management.dll.
  
  After completing the above steps, the EmpowerID DAX Configuration window should look similar to the below image.
Click Apply and then click Ok to close the window.

After installing the Web service, make note of the service URL. You will need this URL when connecting EmpowerID to your Dynamics AX directories. The default URL is https://YourServerName/EmpowerIDDAX/DAXUserService.svc, where YourServerName is the FQDN of your Dynamics server.

To connect EmpowerID to your Dynamics AX User directory

Log in to the EmpowerID Management Console as an administrator.
Click the application icon and select Configuration Manager from the menu.
In Configuration Manager, select the Account Stores node and then click the Add New button above the grid.
In the Add New Security Boundary window that opens, select the Dynamics AX User Security Boundary type from the drop-down list and then click OK.
In the Account Store Details window that appears type a name in the Name field and the URL for the EmpowerID Dynamics AX Web service in your environment in the EID DAX User Service Url field.
Click Save.
Back in the main screen of Configuration Manager, search for the account store you just created and then double-click it or right-click it and select Edit from the context menu.

This opens the Account Store Details screen for the DAX Users connector. The use of this screen is discussed in the next section.

To configure EmpowerID to manage the DAX account store

The Account Store Details screen contains three panes—the General pane, the Inventory pane, and the Group Membership Reconciliation pane—each with settings for configuring a different aspect of the DAX Users account store you just created. To view reference information about a particular pane, expand the drop-down for that pane.

From the General pane of the Account Store Details screen, enable each desired feature by toggling the icon to the right of each feature from a red sphere to a green check box. For example, if you want EmpowerID to provision an EmpowerID Person for each DAX user, toggle the red sphere to the right of Allow Person Provisioning to a green check box.
In the Inventory pane, do the following:

EmpowerID recommends using the Account Inbox to provision Person objects from user accounts. The below information is included to make you aware of the option to provision during inventory.

Toggle Allow Automatic Person Provision On Inventory to reflect your policy for the account store (red sphere for disable and green checkbox for enable). When enabled (and Allow Person Provisioning is enabled for the account store), EmpowerID will provision Person objects for all new accounts discovered during inventory in real-time, if they meet the conditions of your Provision rules.
Toggle Allow Automatic Person Join On Inventory to reflect your policy for the account store (red sphere for disable and green checkbox for enable). When enabled (and Allow Person Provisioning is enabled for the account store), EmpowerID will attempt to join any new accounts discovered during inventory — if it finds one that matches the conditions of the Join rules for the account store. If this setting is not enabled, EmpowerID will not join secondary accounts to an EmpowerID Person, but will instead provision new EmpowerID Persons for each of those additional accounts.

The last action to perform on this screen is to enable inventory. However, before doing so, it is important to configure the attribute flow rules for the account store and to enable the Account Inbox if batch processing of those accounts is desired.

To configure Attribute Flow rules

Open a browser and log in to the EmpowerID Web application.
From the Navigation Sidebar, expand Admin > Applications and Directories and click Attribute Flow Rules.
From the Attribute Flow Rules page, click the Advanced Search drop-down button, enter the name of the account store for which you want to configure the flow rules and then click Search to filter the rules shown in the grid.

The attributes from the EmpowerID Person object are displayed in the left column with the corresponding attributes from the account store displayed in the right column.
To change the flow for an attribute, click the Attribute Flow drop-down located between the Person Attribute column and the External Directory Attribute column, and select the desired flow direction from the context menu.

EmpowerID only considers scores for attribute CRUD operations when multiple account stores with the same user records are connected to EmpowerID, such as would be the case if an HR System and Google Apps were being inventoried by EmpowerID.

Now that the attribute flow has been set, the next steps includes turning on and monitoring inventory.

To turn on inventory

Return to the Account Store Details screen in Configuration Manager.
Look over your settings one last time and when satisfied, turn on inventory by toggling the Enable Inventory button from a red sphere to a green check box.

If you are using the Account Inbox to provision or join the user accounts in the external directory to Empower Persons, you need to turn on the Account Inbox. This is demonstrated in the below section.

To enable the Account Inbox permanent workflow

From the Navigation Sidebar of the EmpowerID Web interface, expand Admin > EmpowerID Servers and Settings and click Permanent Workflows.
From the Permanent Workflows page, click the Display Name link for Account Inbox.
From the View One page for the workflow that appears, click the edit link for the workflow.
From the Permanent Workflow Details form that appears, select Enabled and then click Save. Based on the default settings applied to the workflow, EmpowerID will process 1000 of the user accounts in the Account Inbox every ten minutes, provisioning Person objects from those user accounts and joining them together based on the Join and Provision rules applied to the account store.

To monitor inventory

From Navigation Sidebar, expand System Logs > Policy Inbox Logs and click Account Inbox.

The Account Inbox page appears. This page provides tabbed views of all information related to processing new user accounts discovered in a connected account store during inventory. An explanation of these tabs follows.

Dashboard - This tab provides a quick summary of account inbox activity.
Not Processed - This tab displays a grid view of all inventoried user accounts not yet used to provision a new EmpowerID Person or joined to an existing Person. Any accounts that fail to meet the Join and Provision rules are displayed here as well.
Failed - This tab displays a grid view of any account joining or provisioning failures.
Ignored - This tab displays a grid view of all accounts ignored by the account inbox. Accounts are ignored if they do not qualify as user accounts.
Joined - This tab displays a grid view of all accounts joined to an EmpowerID Person. Joins occur based on the Join rules applied to the account store.
Processed - This tab displays a grid view of all accounts that have been used to either provision a new EmpowerID Person or joined to an existing EmpowerID Person.
Provisioned - This tab displays a grid view of all accounts that have been used to provision an EmpowerID Person. Provisioning occurs based on the Provision rules applied to the account store.
Orphans - This tab displays a grid view of all user accounts without an EmpowerID Person.
All - This tab displays a grid view of all user accounts and the status of those accounts in relation to the Account Inbox.

To connect EmpowerID to your Dynamics AX Worker directory

Log in to the EmpowerID Management Console as an administrator.
Click the application icon and select Configuration Manager from the menu.
In Configuration Manager, select the Account Stores node and then click the Add New button above the grid.
In the Add New Security Boundary window that opens, select the Microsoft Dynamics AX Worker Security Boundary type from the drop-down list and then click OK.
In the Account Store Details window that appears, do the following:
1. Type a name for the account store in the Name field.
2. Type the name of your company in the Company field.
3. Type the user name and password of a Dynamics administrator in the User Name and Password fields, respectively.
4. Type the the value for the worker import service you created in Dynamics AX in the Worker Import Service field. The URI of the service is usually formatted as: net.tcp://YourServerName:8201/DynamicsAx/Services/WorkerImportService
5. Type the the value for the query service in the Query Service url field. The URI of the service should be as follows: net.tcp://YourServerName:8201/DynamicsAx/Services/QueryService
6. If you plan to assign workers to jobs and positions in Dynamics, type the position service url in the Position Service Url field. This is a custom service you can create in Dynamics to query and create jobs and positions. The format for the URI of the service is usually formatted as: net.tcp://YourServerName:8201/DynamicsAx/Services/PositionImportService
Click Save to create the account store.
Back in the main screen of Configuration Manager, search for the account store you just created and then double-click it or right-click it and select Edit from the context menu.

This opens the Account Store Details screen for the DAX Worker connector. You use this screen to specify how you want EmpowerID to manage the account store. As this procedure is the same as that for the DAX User connector, reference that procedure when configuring this screen.

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