Dynamics 365 online and Adx portal on-premise. Are they compatible?

     Adxstudio portals became a part of Dynamics 365. It is definitely a great news and a first step in the long way.   Dynamics 365 on-line has an amazing set of features that really seduce customers to move to cloud.

   Dynamics 365 on-line has option to enable a Portal Add-On. It will install a 8.x portal in crm instance and allow you select from a list of available pre-build solutions like Customer portal, Partner portal etc. The platform has limitations related to portal customization, development, custom coding. Hard to say how long will take to MS and ex-Adx team to provide users with the same level of flexibility and development features as they use to have on premise. In the same time, customers are looking for work arounds to combine Dynamics 365 on-line with on premise portals. This article describes such integration.

Adx and MS still provide support for on premise portals of versions 7.0.0018-23.

! Please mind that Adxstudio and Microsoft officially do not support the integration between version 7.x and Dynamics 365 online. Details are here.

Prerequisites:

•      VS 2015
•       ADX Basic portal 1.0.0008
•      Latest adx web site 7.0.0023

local crm:

•     2016, Update 1.0, 8.1.0.359
•     Crm Sdk 8.1 (not 8.2!)

on-line crm:

     - Must not be enabled:  Adxstudio portal 8.x , like in the screen shot below:

       - Dynamics 365 30-day trial

      - Instance type: sandbox or production

      - Target version: Dynamics 365

      

How to:

         Preparations

-          Back up crm and your web site solution.

-          Make a portable copy of Website as it described here.

2      Prepare on-line instance.

-          Import all Adxstudio crm solutions, those are required for your portal, manually (do not use Adxstudio Installer)

-          Import your crm solutions

-          Import the copy of your Website with Configuration Migration tool

-          Import Master Data if required

3        Website solution preparation

To make your web site to work with Dynamics 365 and sdk 8.2 you need:

-           upgrade your MasterPortal project from .Net Framework 4.5 to 4.5.2

    I used a fresh copy of web site and I had only to add ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib reference to make it work. You might have more changes depend how deep your portal was customized.

-          upgrade Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk and Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Proxy dlls in Framework folder from version 6.x to 8.x

After you replaced those dlls don’t forget reface them in Master Portal project. Add the follow dependent assembly references to your web config file:

 <dependentAssembly>  
     <assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral"/>  
     <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-8.0.0.0" newVersion="8.0.0.0"/>  
    </dependentAssembly>  
    <dependentAssembly>  
     <assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Proxy" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" culture="neutral"/>  
     <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-8.0.0.0" newVersion="8.0.0.0"/>  
    </dependentAssembly>  

-          change the connection string based on on-line instance credentials 

    I’ve found only one issue whilst implementing this workaround:

    In case I used Adxstudio Installer to install a portal in an online instance, I’ve got a strange bug.

    When I call a Web Form placed in a custom Web page with a custom page template then portal became unresponsive. No errors or warnings in Event Viewer. Fiddler show: “Request was aborted”. It never happened if I install adx solutions manually. I cannot say for sure if it caused by my portal configuration or by installer.

Adx portal components those were tested:

•     web forms
•     custom pages
•     custom grid
•     entity list
•     liquid templates 
•     web links

Bottom line:

 We can use hosted portal connected to on-line crm instance. However, no warranties!