Friday, February 6, 2009

Install & Configure Microsoft Commerce Server 2007

1. Install Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 Developer Edition on a standard Visual Studio 2005 workstation with default options selected. If you don't want to develop web applications Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is sufficient.

Commerce Server 2007 needs several prerequisites, including .NET Framework 2.0 and IIS. If these main prerequisites are installed, you can select "Automatically install the platform prerequisites" option so that additional components like hot fixes will be downloaded and installed during the installation process.

Before you install Commerce Server, you must create several accounts to run the Commerce Server services. Refer "Create User Accounts" section in the installation guide for more information.

2. Commerce Server Configuration Wizard allows you to configure commerce server and it can be found in start menu. Once you configured commerce server, it won't allow you to configure again. In the case invoke "CSConfig.exe /f" from Commerce Server command prompt to force the new configuration.

In the configuration wizard select a DB Server to create admin DBs (EX: MSCS_Admin)

3. Unpack .pup file (site) using Commerce Server Site Packager.

This will create Commerce DBs, Web services and application virtual directory.

4. Make sure you granted all relevant permissions, so that application can connect to the DBs (Create Users/Roles in DB, Setup AppPools in IIS).

5. Assign users to commerce server web services in AzMan.

Open AzMan.msc, open AzMan store from xml files that is in each unpacked Web Service folder (Right Click the Authorization Manager node and click on Open Authorization Store). (EX: CatalogAuthorizationStore.xml)

Add your domain account to the roles you wish to manage in Azman (Ex: Go to CatalogAuthorizationStore -> CatalogandInventorySystem -> Role Assignments -> Administrator. Then right click on the roles you wish to manage and choose "Assign Windows Users or Groups").

6. Install Business User Applications on a work station.

Before installing follow these sections in the "installation Guide" to grant required permissions.

  • Assign Write Permissions to the Catalog Authorization Policy
  • Assign Write Permissions to the Temporary ASP.NET Folder
  • Assign Permissions for the Windows Temporary Folder
  • Add Users or Windows Groups to the Authorization Policy Roles
  • Add Users or Windows Groups to the Authorization Policy Roles
  • Add the Worker Process Accounts to the IIS_WPG group

7. Then Configure Catalog Manager, etc to your Web Services and you are done!!!

In case if you get "WebService was not available" error message and WebServices can be navigated through IE without any issue, the reason would be the Catalog Web Service does not have write access to the AuthorizationPolicy path.

To resolve this issue you have to assign write permissions on CatalogAuthorizationStore.xml to the account running the AppPool. (CatalogAuthorizationStore.xml file can be found in the same directory as CatalogWebService.asmx. Account running the AppPool can be found from IIS Manager.)

Hope this help someone, as configuring Commerce Server is always tricky.