AX 2009 BizTalk Adapter

I recently did my first experiences with installing the AX 2009 BizTalk Adapter. "As usual" some discoveries were done, but this time it was more related to my less than minor knowledge of BizTalk...

After the BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Standard Edition (BT) was installed and verified, I went away installing the adapter "by the book" (that's the Installation Guide and the Server and Database Administration Guide). The documentation doesn't really contain a lot of information for BT newbie’s like me and after Googling about the error message I received, it seems like several people has stumbled across this one both for AX 4 and AX 2009. Surprisingly no solution was given and I thought this was a good opportunity to share my experiences.

As mentioned I went away installing the BizTalk adapter (custom installation, check the BizTalk adapter which not surprisingly also checks the .NET Business Connector). I then entered the necessary information the installation wizard asked for and hit the button labeled "Install". After some minutes watching the progress bar for installation of AX Components, I noticed the progress bar doing a "negative" progress followed by a summary saying "Setup was not completed" with a red square in front of both .NET Business Connector and BizTalk adapter. Ok, as normal open the log file and look for errors... Scrolling through the log file I noticed that the .NET Business Connector installed just fine. After some more scrolling down, I found the following error message: "An error occurred during the BizTalk adapter install custom action step within the Microsoft Dynamics AX components installer. For details, see the previous messages in the log. >>Install: BizTalk Adapter registration failed: Access denied". Being under some pressure getting the task done, I though "Oh no, not another day of hunting down a resolution". As mentioned I goggled about the message in bold above and I found several hits to similar experiences, but without a solution.

So my other really good friend in my professional life - the Event log - was my next stop. After filtering the event log - application, I found some warnings with source ENTSSO replicating the Access denied message. This is in my mind always a good indication and I then read a little bit about this on Microsoft TechNet. ENTSSO is short for Enterprise Single Sign On and this service is a vital part of the security mechanism in BizTalk Server with regards to authentication. After reading some more, I decided to open the Microsoft Single Sign On Admin Console. At the end of the summary saying Errors, I once again saw the "Access denied" message under the category RPC. Then I was "bold enough" to add my installation user to the security group called SSO Administrators. Reopened the SSO Admin Console and the RPC error was gone!

I also added the installation user to the BizTalk Administrators security group (required to add new adapters). After doing a new installation of the BizTalk adapter, everything went as expected and the log file looked just fine. Checking inside the BizTalk Admin Console, I found the adapter listed as a resource under "Application.1" (the default application in BizTalk).

To summarize this Blog entry, you have to understand some of the basics of BizTalk before installing the BizTalk adapter for AX 2009 (and also AX 4 as far as I can understand). If this is something Microsoft should mention in the documentation or not, is really open for discussion. As far as I know, they are working on some kind of detailed information right now and maybe this will be included. But all in all, this is another example of the increased demand for broad technical knowledge to install every component available in AX 2009. In my opinion it's a new ballgame compared to previous versions of this packaged application from Microsoft.

We will carry on the next days trying to get AX to communicate with BizTalk utilizing Application Intergration Framework (AIF) and I expect to be able to share some information from this journy quite soon.

So long!