Advanced Cloud Security Set Up

Advanced Cloud Security is the best way to limit what data your users have access to in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

You have control over fields and most controls on every single page in the system and you can apply dynamic filters to all tables throughout the system with Advanced Cloud Security.

Start by selecting Advanced Cloud Security from AppSource and install it onto your environment.

The setup procedure requires you to have the SUPER permission set for all companies:

advanced cloud security - super permission

SUPER for all companies

Next, change your plan to the Administration of users, user groups and permissions role center to access the setup of ACS.

advanced cloud security - administration of users

Now you have access to setup ACS:

Click Setup to start the configuration of ACS.

The first time you access setup, you’ll be redirected to the App registration.

The EFOQUS App Registration Dialog

Click on Click here to register and to sign up for ACS and complete the process at www.efoqus.ca. Completing this process will give you a registration code that you can enter into the dialogue to register the app.

Now you can see the setup page:

advanced cloud security integration wrapper extension

The secret sauce in ACS is that it creates a new extension to your Dynamics 365 Business Central. The new extension is the connection between ACS and all the pages and data.

There are two ways to generate the Extension Complete or Optimized.

Complete will generate an extension that covers every single field and action on every page.

Optimized will generate an extension that only covers the pages where you have a security setup defined.

So, if your purpose of using ACS is limited to a set of specific areas, then Optimized is the right method for you, but if you have security set up throughout the system choose Complete. You can switch between the methods without any issues.

The important part to understand, is that if you install NEW extensions, from AppSource or by your local developer, the extension has to be re-generated to cover the functionality in the new app.

The Object Range is where the new extension will be installed. ACS will search automatically to find an appropriate free range in the 50.000-99.999 range. You can control this yourself. The important part is the ACS will generate 1000s of page extensions if you have 1000s of pages.

Bad Pages are pages that do not allow to be extended. This is typically technical setup pages. The list provided is pages in standard Dynamics 365 Business Central that cannot be extended. Right now, there’s no way for ACS to figure out if a page can be extended or not. So if you install an App that has a page that breaks the extension, add the page number to this list.

This is the list for BC versions 18. We’ll keep this list updated when we discover new “bad pages”:

4023,4700,4500,4503,4504,4509,4511,4512,888,889,890,988,989,990,991,1366,1367,1369,9847,9848,9888,9890,9891,9892,9893,9894,9895,9896,356,683,896,1459,1613,1754,1800,5555,5557,7200,7201,7202,7207,8637,9169,9190,9511,9551,9620,9621,9622,9630,9631,9632,9634,9813,9814,9992,20043,20044,20045,20046,20047,130407,1910,2870,2875,9654,20054,20055,20056,20057,20059,20060,30057

Problem Fields is accessible by Handled Problem Fields on Setup page, These fields are controlled and cannot override the visibility behaviour by other objects in Business Central. The great thing about this design on the page is to allow you to override the visibility. You’ll have to Click on Pull List from Objects to see the problem fields. The following gives you an example of how to control Problem Fields.

A common use case is to hide Net Change in Chart of Account page. Net Change in Chart of Account page is controlled by p165AmountVisible (a programming reference) in Business Central. By default, Business Central does not give user the ability to hide this field; therefore, you need to select Use(Visible) as one of the Visible Solution in order to override the control and be able to set up a security feature.

advanced cloud security - problem fields

In the Problem Fields page, if the fields are checked, these bad fields will break the wrapper extensions.

Generate the Extension

Click Create Extension to generate the extension, depending on the creation method and amount of security set up, this might take a while:

advanced cloud security - generating extension

Generating the extension

When you have generated the extension, it should be installed in Extension Management and be ready to go:

advanced cloud security - extension management

It’s called the ACS Integration Wrapper

The extension is also downloaded as an app file, so if you’re generating the app in a sandbox environment, it can be installed on production by uploading it in Extension Management.

If you’re testing this on a docker container the PowerShell script to install the extension is:

Publish-BCContainerApp -containerName BCcontainer -appFile 'c:\users\erik\downloads\ACS Integration Wrapper_E Foqus Canada Inc._1.0.0.2.app' -install -sync -skipVerification -scope Tenant