Monthly Archives: March 2015

Get-AXAutoRunXML custom PowerShell function

29 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Powershell

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

The obvious posts following the Start-AXBuildCompile post would be to talk about the AOT client compile, compiling IL and synching the AX data dictionary.  However, all of these processes rely on the AX SysAutoRun functionality.  To prep for these upcoming PowerShell functions, I will walk you through the Get-AXAutoRunXML function.

The SysAutoRun class is a class in AX that allows you to run functionality in AX at startup.  This becomes the entry point for most, if not all of the processes that you want to automate in AX.  The Get-AXAutoRunXML function allows you to build an AxaptaAutoRun xml very easily that can then be used to run different processes in AX for your automation.

The Get-AXAutoRunXML takes 3 parameters:

  • ExitWhenDone (If this parameter is passed, AX will run the process and exit afterwards)
  • LogFile (Determines if the process makes the infolog available for output and where that file is saved)
  • Command (This parameter is used to choose what process AX runs at startup)

This is a very straightforward function that can be found in Codeplex.  It takes the parameters and returns an AxaptaAutoRun xml that can then be passed into AX to allow multiple AX processes to be automated (e.g. client compile, IL compile, data dictionary sync).

If you examine the function, you will see that the xml has a version property in the header.  I struggled with whether or not to make this property a parameter of the function.  Ultimately, I decided that if the AxaptaAutoRun version is changed, I would more than likely have to update this function to account for changes in the xml.  For this reason, I decided to leave it as a hardcoded value but this could change in the future.

Start-AXBuildCompile custom PowerShell function

22 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Powershell

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

This function was created to allow you to run a server compile from PowerShell.  I will apologize upfront to anyone on an earlier version of AX 2012 than R2 CU7.  This PowerShell function will only be useful if you are running a version of AX 2012 that is R2 CU7 or greater.  The reason being that R2 CU7 introduced the AxBuild.exe server compile.  There is a lot of information in the link regarding this process but for my purposes, the most important part was the difference in compile time.  Compilation time in my standalone development environment decreased from 4+ hours for the client compile to about 20 minutes when using the server compile.  I have other PowerShell functions that I will discuss in future posts that allow you use the client compile that is available in earlier versions but this one uses the server compile.

This function is also the main reason why I originally customized the Get-AXConfig function made available from the DynamicsAXCommunity PowerShell module that I discussed in an earlier post.  I needed the ServerBinDir for access to the AxBuild.exe server compile and the ServerLogDir for access to the compilation results file.  You will need to have the DynamicsAXCommunity PowerShell module installed and loaded in your session to use this function.  You should add the loading command for it to your profile.

  • Import-Module DynamicsAXCommunity -DisableNameChecking

The Start-AXBuildCompile function takes either 1 parameter or a mix of up to 8 parameters:

  • ConfigPath (Client configuration for the chosen AX environment)
  • AXVersion (This should be 6 but I’ve included it in anticipation for AX 7)
  • LogPath (Used to override the default location of the AXCompileAll.html file)
  • NoCleanup (Tells the program to keep the temporary files it writes under the %TEMP% directory)
  • StopAOS (In certain scenarios, the AxBuild.exe service might provide outdated metadata or outdated p-code to the compile process if the AOS is running)
  • SMTPServer (SMTP server to use to send the email)
  • MailMsg (Net.Mail.MailMessage object used to send the email)
  • VariablePath (Path to a file used to default the parameters/variables)
  • Workers (Used to force the number of workers used to compile from the default used by AXBuild.exe)

The VariablePath variable is being used in my functions to default variables.  It saves me time when running things in each environment to set up the variables beforehand and then I pass in the location of my D2D_PSFunctionVariables.ps1 file as this parameter.  This allows me to use these functions without filling out all of the variables in my PowerShell function calls.  You can find my D2D_PSFunctionVariables.ps1 file and the Start-AXBuildCompile custom PowerShell function in Codeplex.

The steps of this function aren’t overly complicated.  They are:

  • Load the variables if a VariablePath parameter is used
  • Get the AX environment info using Get-AXConfig
  • Stop the AOS if the switch parameters is passed
  • Build the command parameters for AXBuild.exe
  • Call the command using Invoke-Expression
  • Start the AOS if it was previously stopped
  • Get the file with the results of the compilation
  • Send an email with the compilation results file attached if a valid MailMessage variable is set up.  If one isn’t set up, you will need to navigate to the default location for this file on the AOS server to view it.

A couple of final things.  This function needs to be run on the AOS server.  It has not been built to allow remote functionality.  Also, I have only tested this function on AX 2012 R2 CU7 but I would expect it to work on R3 as well.  Please comment if there are any issues on R3.

Send-Email custom PowerShell function

13 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in Powershell

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

When looking at automating my AX 2012 processes, the first thing I was interested in was the ability to send emails when steps were completed.  This would allow me to kick off my process and walk away, tracking it on my phone if necessary.

The function I created for this is Send-Email and can be found on Codeplex.  It takes 7 parameters:

  • SMTPServer (SMTP server that will send the email)
  • From (Who the email is from)
  • To (Who the email is to)
  • Subject (Email subject)
  • Body (Email body)
  • Priority (Email priority)
  • FileLocation (Allows you to attach a file if used.  I primarily use this to attach my log files)

This function uses the Net.Mail.MailMessage and Net.Mail.SmtpClient to send an email message.  I usually default some of these parameters in the scripts I use to call these functions but we’ll get into that when I walk through my build function.  You can view the code in this function using PowerShell ISE.

The way that I currently test and run these standalone PowerShell functions is to use my profile.  In my profile, I include a link to a PowerShell script that holds my function locations.  I do this so that when I add new functions, I can just include them in my D2D_PSFunctions.ps1 script and they will be automatically included by my profile the next time I open up PowerShell.  You can get more info on what I’m doing in an earlier post as well as Codeplex.

Please take a look at this function to get an idea of what is going on.  There may be optimizations or better ways to do things in PowerShell but I was teaching myself PowerShell while I wrote all of this.

DynamicsAXCommunity PowerShell module plus changes

04 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Powershell

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

When I first started looking at creating an automated build process, I settled on PowerShell primarily because of 2 resources; the DynamicsAXCommunity PowerShell module and the Build and Deploy Scripts for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.  While I was ultimately unable to get the B&D Scripts running in my environment, I did learn a lot about PowerShell and the direction I needed to go to get a build process going.  I ended up using a lot of the ideas in my own processes.

The DynamicsAXCommunity Powershell module became the first brick in my process.  I started out using most of the functions available but eventually rewrote some of them to incorporate email functionality.  The three that I still use regularly are Get-AXConfig, Start-AXAOS and Stop-AXAOS.  I have also modified some of the code used in the Get-AXConfig method to return some values from the configurations that I needed.

My changes to the module are on the alpha version.  There appear to be 2 newer versions of this module, a beta and 0.3.4 but I have not integrated my changes into either of these.  You can find both the original alpha version and the version with my code changes in Codeplex based on the check-ins.  I plan to either integrate my changes in the newest version or add the three functions that I use from the DynamicsAXCommunity module into my functions at some point in the future.  For now, the alpha version has been used with my scripts for the last year and half and I feel comfortable that it works.

I have added three values that are returned from the Get-AXConfig function.

  • ServerBinDir
  • ServerLogDir
  • AosName

DynamicsAXCommuntiyChanges

The two directories are used to get executables and compile logs and the AOS name is used in some of the standard AX PowerShell functions installed with the Management Utilities.

This post and my last one have laid the groundwork for what is necessary to start using my functions.  In my next post, we will start looking at them.