Can SET files be located on network shares

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by Community Member

Hi all.

We've been using GP2010 for several years and are now doing an upgrade to 2018 (via 2015).

Currently, we have 4 different SET files we use to get different users their own report dictionaries. This has been working fine for years and works fine on our test 2018 instance too. GP is accessed from RemoteApp.

Currently these 4 different set files are located on the C: of the remoteapp servers. The set files themselves point to dictionaries and addins stored on network shares. So if we make a change to one set file, we have to repeat that on all the remoteapp servers.

We'd like to move those set files to a network share, so we can just update it once. But this isn't working. For example, if we have eOne's smartView tool specified in the SET file, and the set file in on a network share, it doesn't load. If we copy that same set file to the local c: on the remoteapp server, it does work.

Example commandline:

dynamics.exe dynamics-user1.set

dynamics.exe N:\gp-config\dynamics-user1.set

The second example doesn't work. Is this a limitation of GP that the set file needs to be on local c:? or might it be a permissions issue? I've tried using UNC path as well, and granting domain users full control over that shared folder, but it still doesn't work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

*This post is locked for comments

I have the same question (0)

All responses (5)

Answers (0)

L Vail 65,271 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi,

Personally, I haven't had a problem with a shared .set file. When you say it doesn't work, do you mean GP will not launch, or that it's not 'looking' and the appropriate dictionaries? Is the Dynamics.exe pathed to its correct location? Rather than just putting "dynamics.exe", have you tried putting the full path to the dynamics.exe file? Your shortcut would look something like:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics\GP2016\DYNAMICS.EXE" "N:\gp-config\dynamics-user1.set"

If you take the third party product (eOne's SmartView) out of the .SET file, does it work? I know that eOne's product has addins that it may be looking for - I would expect an error of some kind though if that were the case. Does the machine on which the .SET file is located also have the dynamics gp client installed?

If you log on to the machine as the Administrator and then launch Dynamics as administrator and sign in as 'sa' can you get that far?

Leslie

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Leslie,

When I say it doesn't work, GP opens fine, but the addins aren't there, like SmartView. No error messages in event viewer.

The full path to the EXE is there, I just put the plain exe for the example. The machine holding the shared SET file is just a file server, no GP related apps installed.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
L Vail 65,271 on at

Like (0)

Report

Ok,

I have to ask this - when you look at the .SET file are all of your addins listed? Also, on the workstation that is launching GP do the dictionaries exist in the spot indicated in the .set file? Another .set file related question is to make sure the order of the file paths matches the order the products are listed in.

Leslie

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Yes all the addins are listed.

I can copy the SET file from the network share to the local workstation C:, then run that same set file, with all the same paths listed in it, and it works fine.

I'll do some more troubleshooting tomorrow since it seems it should be possible. I didn't want to spend a couple hours troubleshooting something that wasn't even possible to do.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

David Musgrave MVP ... 14,095 Most Valuable Professional on at

Like (0)

Report

To confirm the launch file being used on your system, go to the Administration Area Page and select Setup >> Edit Launch File.

You can click on each product to see the paths assigned to that product for each Dictionary Location ID (if you have more than one defined).

Make sure that the paths are defined using UNC paths as you cannot rely on a drive letter being defined on all workstations.

If you look at the launch file directly (with Notepad.exe or equivalent), you will notice that the pathnames are in generic pathname format rather than native pathname format. Generic pathname format has the drive with colons before and after and uses forward slash rather than backslash and does not have a root level slash.

Please note that I seriously recommend against having launch files or dictionaries stored on a central server (especially for application dictionaries, but also custom forms and reports dictionaries). There are significant performance overheads and risk of corruption to custom dictionaries. This is all explained in my articles from 10 years ago.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/developingfordynamicsgp/2008/08/20/automating-distribution-of-customizations-part-1/

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/developingfordynamicsgp/2008/08/26/automating-distribution-of-customizations-part-2/

Was this reply helpful? Yes No