At the time, I was working on a project where the customer had 10+ E4SE sites.  Each time they rebuilt the sites it would take 15-20 minutes each (this is using hardware of 5 years ago).  At that rate, it was taking several hours.

This is when I decided to spend a few hours of my own to build the E4SE Customization Installer.  This has since been redesigned with additional features. Without having to completely rebuild the site(s), installing customizations became easy and super fast.  We are talking about seconds!

Many if not all the customizations I performed, I never insisted the customer use the Site Builder unless there was a specific need. If they wanted to, I would deploy the customization(s) into a CAB file for the site builder.  However, many customers liked the fact that the downtime was limited to a few minutes at most using the custom installer.

The E4SE Customization Installer is a simple interface that performs the minimum tasks of:

• XCOPY custom/new files into selected E4SE site(s)
• Perform IISRESET (optional) to clear all loaded objects in order for the update to take place
• Run GenDescriptors (optional) in order for E4SE to acknowledge new items and allow menu and security assignments.

Screenshots

Custom Installer EXE	Main Screen	Main Screen (with source)
GenDescriptors Automation	Installation Progress

If you would like to know more about the E4SE Customization Installer, please let us know. This applications is currently available at no charge.  If you subscribe to our newsletter, you’ll be notified when it is available for general download.

It’s time you simplify and save time!

Here are my initial thoughts/observations:

• The client interface customization workbench (Customization Tools Dialog) reminds me allot of FrontOffice/Clientele customizations.  I always like the Clientele way of doing customization as you totally eliminate the manual deployment of customization to every desktop.  Development of customizations can be performed on any client (in most cases) and then simply submitted to the main repository.  A user logs onto their client and voila the customizations are refreshed into their environment.  It couldn’t be easier!
• 

  Properties Editor

  The Customization Tools Dialog is very similar to Visual Studio development environment when it comes to looking at form objects and reviewing/setting their properties.  Documentation is a little light or non-existent on some of the properties of the various object types.

• 

  Script Editor

  The Customization Tools Dialog script editor is one of my least favorite.  NO INTELLISENSE!  If IntelliSense was available it would save us time to having to refer to the object model that we are working with or adding.

• Customizing Reports is quite easy.  In just a few steps you can add new data to any report and of course your company logo.  I really like that the Crystal Report data connection is to an XML file.  Epicor 9.0x generates these XML file when running a report.  If you’ve changed the data model for a report by adding new fields and ran the report, the XML document contains these new fields.  Refresh the data connection in Crystal and the new field is available.  Now I still need to look at report implementations using stored procedures.
• Core BAQs do not exist.  Having to modify certain BAQs require a complete rewrite.

Again these are my first impressions/thoughts.  I have yet to perform extensive customizations/changes.

If anyone has anything to add please let me know.

My next post will be with the ICE 2.x SDK for performing more in-depth customizations and to create new applications.  Sometimes you can use it for simple things too!  Such as, adding a parameter to an existing core report without having to recreate the BAQ manually.

The issue came when we tried to launch our custom reports from SharePoint (SSRS was installed as SharePoint Integration mode).  We would get the following system error:

“no connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 443″

SSRS was not configured to use any SSL port and we definitely knew it was security related.  The windows event log pointed us into this direction.  The AD user assigned to the services, application pool, and databases was all good.  We tried many variations and still no success.

After a day of trying new things (everything), searching on Microsoft Sites, Forums and blogs, we could not find a solution.  I left the client having to contact Microsoft for assistance.  After a little over 4 hours on hold, Microsoft was able to assist by going through a series of checks.

All it took was the change of one setting.  In the rsreportserver.config file there is a key titled “SecureConnectionLevel”. The following is from MSDN:

Specifies the degree to which Web service calls must us Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This setting is used for both the Report Server Web service and Report Manager. This value is set when you configure a URL to use HTTP or HTTPS in the Reporting Services Configuration tool. Valid values range from 0 through 3, where 0 is least secure.

rsreportserver.config

The value we had was set to “2″.  When we changed it to “0″ the system message went away. When we look at the Configuration Manager we do not have anything set for SSL.

So happened?  We are not sure.  It is possible that the SSL setting was provided during initial install but when removed the setting remained.

It only takes one setting to cause so much grief!  The good news, we are up and running.

Thanks Microsoft.

I’m very excited about the opportunity to attend Perspectives 2009, Epicor’s Global User Conference, scheduled for November 8-10, 2009. There will be multiple days of hands-on education, networking with industry peers, and over 500 sessions to choose from. The conference offers content directly applicable to my work on the (insert: project(s) or initiatives you are working on) and will allow me to network with a number of Epicor product experts and over 2000 Epicor users. Many of the technical presentations cover how to reduce costs, increase ROI and deal with compliance issues.

Click here to learn more and hope to see you there.