Microsoft is releasing upcoming changes to Azure Service Bus that will affect Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Azure connector, email workflow approvals, companion/mobile applications, and vendor portals.

It will also affect any other application or service that uses Access Control Service (ACS).

If you're currently using Dynamics AX 2012 mobile or tablet applications for time and expense management, and/or approve workflows via email, then you will be affected by the upcoming changes to Azure Service Bus.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Azure connector uses the Access Control Service (ACS) for user authentication.  The management of authorization rules is managed inside by the Azure Active Directory Access Control Service (ACS), and tokens obtained from ACS are passed to Service Bus for authorizing access to the desired functionality in AX.

Starting November 7, 2018, all ACS components will be permanently shut down, causing all requests to the service to fail. This includes the Access Control management portal, the management service, secure token service, and token transformation engine rule.

That said, ACS will be replaced by Shared Access Signature (SAS) token authorization model. Currently, it is no longer possible to create new Service Bus namespaces that are paired with ACS and although existing ACS enabled service bus namespaces will continue to work until November 7^th, the replacement solution for Dynamics AX 2012 Azure connector to support SAS is still in progress and will be published as soon as it is available. If you have a critical situation with no ability to create a new namespace, feel free to contact Rand Group to discuss your options/alternatives.

How can you prepare for these new changes to Dynamics AX 2012?

To continue using email workflow approvals, mobile applications, and other Dynamics AX features, you will need to migrate your components previously using Access Control Service (ACS) to Shared Access Signatures (SAS). This token model is provided directly by Service Bus and can be used without any intermediaries through access to the SAS rule name and rule key.

As the migration plan becomes more clear, we will release necessary steps and estimates on upgrading your existing ACS components. For any questions about these changes and how they will affect you, contact our team and we will be happy to assist you.