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[Andres Lopez]

Hello all,

We have NAV 2017.  Has anybody created a ‘customer portal’?  We are trying to set-up  a few of our customers to log directly to NAV via the web client.  There are a few websites that state that this is possible, but have not been able to make it work.

We have created a middle-tier and set it up for External Users setup with NAV authentication (‘NavUserPassord’), and have changed various settings in the configuration files.  Just wondering if anybody else has done this successfully or have any information regarding what we are trying to accomplish. 

Andres

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Andres Lopez
The Peterson Company
Auburn WA
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[Ben Baxter]

I don’t want this to come across as a sales pitch, but it relates to your topic.

As a partner we have been developing a Customer Portal.  We are still prototyping this, but the general scope is a web service connected to NAV, which reads a table connected to the Customer Record.  This allows you to generate User/Password logins and tokenize the connection.  Our initial release will be connecting Open Sales Quote/Orders/Invoices (based on Setup), Posted Shipments and Invoices, Contact Info, including Customer Record Data and Contacts.

We are not trying to compete with a full E-Commerce platforms as there are plenty of amazing solutions in the market for that.  We’re trying to create a simple Customer Experience with good content directly from NAV.

Hopefully this gives you some helpful information on what we were thinking to patch a gap in the market, hopefully we can get our version released soon.

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Ben Baxter
Consultant
Accent Software, Inc.
Carmel IN
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[Ritu Sood]

We have created a SharePoint based Customer portal for our customers which integrates with NAV 2017/2018/Business Central. The reason we chose SharePoint was to save the licensing cost. If a customer comes directly on the Web client, you still need Limited user NAV licenses (at the  minimum). The SharePoint approach saves that cost even.

The idea here is to share with you our experience of doing this.

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Ritu Sood
AlleTechnologies Inc.
McLean
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[Rob Hansen]

Hi Andre –

We are a NAV partner/reseller but this is NOT a sales pitch!  We have done exactly what you’re talking about to set up a customer portal for our own clients to connect to our NAV system through the web client to manage issues and tasks, and it has worked beautifully!  Yes, limited user licenses are required for the customers that will access your portal, but it’s an incredibly quick and easy way to get a portal up and running.  The key things are:

– restricting the profiles for your customers to prevent page configuration changes
– setting up a suitable role center and pages that only provide what you want them to have access to
– in the loginmanagement codeunit (40), add code to the loginstart function to apply filters to the tables you are giving your customers access to, to limit them to only see data for their account (this applies globally when you do it here)

Like i said, it’s worked out really great for us.  Good luck with it and feel free to PM me if you have any questions!

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Rob Hansen CPA, CMA
Partner
DynamicsPath
Toronto, ON Canada
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[Rob Hansen]

Also Andre, maybe post some details around the problems you’re hitting trying to make it work and we can try to help?

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Rob Hansen CPA, CMA
Partner
DynamicsPath
Toronto, ON Canada
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[Ryan Ketterling]

,,Hello Anders,
Can you provide more information about what you are not able to do?  Do you have the web client working internally?  
Here are some high level steps- it is not meant to be a all inclusive list.

1. Create a NAV service using NAVUserPassword (must use an SSL) through NAV Administration Tool
2. Create a new NAV Web Server instance to work with the new NAV service
   1. Since you probably have an existing Web Service you will  need to use Power Shell to do this. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/how-to–set-up-multiple-web-server-instances-for-the-microsoft-dynamics-nav-web-client
   2. Alternatively, you can edit the web config of the existing server – 
3. Secure with SSL https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/how-to–configure-ssl-to-secure-the-connection-to-microsoft-dynamics-nav-web-client
4. Open access through firewall
5. Create DNS Record.

Unrelated, but since you have gone this far, if you want to configure your Outlook inbox to have NAV https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/setting-up-office-add-ins-outlook-inbox

FYI you do not need to create a second user for your AD users, You can just add a password.  Their user name is DomainUser.

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Ryan Ketterling
Business Automation Specialists of MN, Inc.
Minneapolis MN
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[Andres Lopez]

Thanks for all the responses, I appreciate the feedback.

Actually, we are just trying to create a simple customer/vendor portal for select partners.  The solution that Rob describes is really what I was looking for, at least short term due to the high cost to make available to all of our partners.

I’m not able to make this work, it was just a simple change of user type, I had the test users as External user, when it should be a Full or Limited user.  Instead of modifying codeunit 40 that Rob mentions,  we will use Easy Security to control access using the ‘data set’ feature of Easy Security.  

Longer term, we will be looking at a more cost-effective solution similar to what the others reference or recommend.  Again, thanks to all that responded, it is very helpful to learn about the different options we have.

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Andres Lopez
ERP Developer/Analyst
The Peterson Company
Auburn WA
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[Geovanny Fuentes]

?Andres, a lot of times people have many different definitions to what they are trying to do.

The web client does give a user (REMOTELY) to do what a normal user in NAV requires to create a customer, Sales Order, Run reports etc. Security does need to be established with a proper ROLE being assigned and profile.

If you are looking into an app to have the user visit your specific website, click enter order, select items, quantity, image etc, not using Navisions web client screen then you are talking about something different on how people will respond to your question.

Now Navision does have various areas you need to be aware of, such as IIS, Firewall, SQL Security, NAV security, ODAP,Nav license Limited/Full, etc.

How far have you gotten with the configuration of the service and things I mentioned above?

Have you tested it via local LAN accessing your webclient once you configured it?

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web Client – Dynamics NAV

Microsoft		remove preview
Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web Client – Dynamics NAV The Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client gives users access to Dynamics NAV data over a network, such as the Internet, by using a web browser. Users can view and modify data from a user-friendly interface that resembles the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows client, where the starting point is the Role Center. View this on Microsoft >

Here is a good article to read:

How to install the NAV Web Client (Web Server Components)

Ibrahiem’s Technical Info		remove preview
How to install the NAV Web Client (Web Server Components) In this article I will explain how to install the Web Server Components for Dynamics NAV 2016. High-level steps: 1. Install the ‘Web Server Components’ from the Dynamics NAV DVD. 2. Start your internet browser and go to http://yourservername:8080. More detailed steps: 1. Install the ‘Web Server Components’ from the Dynamics NAV 2016 DVD. View this on Ibrahiem’s Technical Info >

Good luck.

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Geovanny Fuentes
San Diego CA
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[Andres Lopez]

Geovanny,

We have this working,select partners will access a specific role with limited access to their info. via Easy Security using the Data Security permissions feature.  These will all be logging in via a dedicated middle–tier with NAV authentication.  

This will meet our immediate requirements.  For longer term, we would like to have this portal available for many more partners (customers and vendors), however, we will look into a different solution due to the cost of having to have a limited user license for each partner.

This portal is not intended to be an e-Commerce solution.

Andres

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Andres Lopez
ERP Developer/Analyst
The Peterson Company
Auburn WA
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