Tutorial: Debugging AX while still using restricted roles (non-admin)

Saw this on our internal forum today, and thought it's a nice thing to share with all of you.

1.       Close All AX instances

2.       Open AX Development Environment (ax32.exe -development)

3.       Open AX Application (ax32.exe)

4.       Add Role that you would like to test to your UserId

a.       System Administration > Common > Users

b.      Find yourself and double click to get to the detail window

c.       Assign role that you want to test

5.       Close AX Application

6.       Set break points in AX Development Environment

7.       Create a job and add this line

             SecurityUtil::sysAdminMode(false);
 

8.       From the AX Development Environment “Ctrl W” to open the application

9.       You are now in a reduced permission user and have the ability to debug. J

 

To get your environment back to full admin, re-execute the job in step 7 with a true.

Note: This will not work for EP, Services, direct BC.NET and cases using runas(), as the SecurityUtil::sysAdminMode is limited to the current session.


Ed Budrys from our Security team deserves the credit for the above.

Let me know if you found this to be useful.
Thanks

Run AX as a different user from Windows Explorer

This is something useful for people who have already switched to Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista / Windows 7.
As you have probably noticed, the Run as... command is not available in these versions of Windows any longer (it's still available from command line, of course, but that's not as user friendly).

As AX users/developers/etc., we all ofter have to log into AX as a different user, for example to verify security settings for a particular AX role being setup.
Having Run as... command in the context menu really saves time here.

So, Microsoft, namely Mark Russinovich, provided a way to return this useful command back into the standard context menu.

You can download and install ShellRunas from technet.

Now, to install it, simply follow the easy instructions below:

1. Download and unzip ShellRunas by following the link above
2. Copy ShellRunas.exe to your Windows\System32 folder
3. Open a Command Line and run the following command: shellrunas /reg
4. A message box confirming successfull installation should pop up. Click OK
5. Now, holding down the SHIFT key, right-click the AX icon. You will see a Run as different user... item in the context menu

To uninstall the Shellrunas utility, simply execute the following command from a command prompt: shellrunas /unreg