Version 9.0 side-by-side not completely working...

It took a day and a half, but I have successfully configured our Version 7.6 in a test environment, beside a new version 9 environment. It appears that both work properly. Then I configured the side-by-side implementation.

It took me a little while to figure out why the side-by-side would not log me in when opening an item in the 7.6, which was resolved by changing the BPM76System configuration in web.config. This was not noted in the instructions I used:

<add key="BPM76System" value="http://devmetastorm/MetastormSSO/eexternalform.asp?service=Development&redirect=http://devmetastorm/Metastorm/"></add>

Now my blank forms and my admin forms work properly, but the todo and watch list is blank. Does anyone have any idea why this might be, and how I might be able to fix this?

Thanks,

Ryan

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Comments

John Cross-Martin

Hi,

I'm surprised you need the full SSO URL in web config. It seemed to work fine for me in our SSO environment with just the basic URL (e.g. http://Myv7Server/Metastorm). But if it works that way for you then I guess it should be fine to leave it that way.

As for the lack of blank forms, this is probably because the role assignments are missing from the v9 database. The side by side help file has this note:

Following initial side by side configuration, all role assignments previously made on the version 7.6 database will effectively be removed, because the eAssignment table is renamed. It would be possible for a Database Administrator to copy the contents of the version 7.6 eAssignmentBackup and eAttributeBackup tables to the version 9 eAssignment and eAttribute tables in order to restore these assignments.

You should try copying the role assignments over to the new database bearing in mind that your users probably don't all exist in the v9 DB. After copying over usernames and role assignments you may also need to change the case of the 'everybody' role to 'Everybody' in the new eAssignment table.

Regards.

John Cross-Martin

Sorry just realised that you were referring to ToDo/Watch lists rather than blank/admin forms. My original comments about the eAssignment table still holds true though. It's worth comparing the tables to make sure all role assignments are correct.

Also, please let us know if there are any event log messages reported that might point to a role failure.

Jerome_Pearce

jcm wrote:

Following initial side by side configuration, all role assignments previously made on the version 7.6 database will effectively be removed, because the eAssignment table is renamed. It would be possible for a Database Administrator to copy the contents of the version 7.6 eAssignmentBackup and eAttributeBackup tables to the version 9 eAssignment and eAttribute tables in order to restore these assignments.

You should try copying the role assignments over to the new database bearing in mind that your users probably don't all exist in the v9 DB. After copying over usernames and role assignments you may also need to change the case of the 'everybody' role to 'Everybody' in the new eAssignment table.

Seriously? Does that mean there is a lot of manual intervention required to get side-by-side working? I would have expected that not to be the case, surely?

rposener

Just wanted to keep this post updated as well. This has not corrected the issue. I did find some discrepancies in the eAssignment table, which I resolved with the following sql statement:

INSERT INTO [Metastorm9].[dbo].[eAssignment]
SELECT seven.[eRoleName]
      ,seven.[eUserName]
      ,seven.[eFolderID]
      ,seven.[eUpdatedTime]
  FROM [Metastorm76].[dbo].[eAssignmentBackup] seven
LEFT OUTER JOIN [Metastorm9].[dbo].[eAssignment] nine 
ON seven.eRoleName = nine.eRoleName 
AND seven.eUserName = nine.eUserName 
AND seven.eFolderID = nine.eFolderID
GROUP BY seven.[eRoleName]
      ,seven.[eUserName]
      ,seven.[eFolderID]
      ,seven.[eUpdatedTime]
HAVING COUNT(nine.eFolderID) = 0

I also updated the everyone group name, as I saw suggested using this (although this shouldn't have effect based upon sql itself not being case-insensitive):

update [Metastorm9].[dbo].[eAssignment] 
SET eRoleName = 'Everybody' 
WHERE eRoleName='everybody'

rposener

OK - we got this all working in our Dev environment. There are definately a few items which are not documented that I have seen.

Both versions must use the same SSO trusted accounts. (this is why I had to change my web.config - to get 7.6 to create a new session for the new trusted account) After changing this to match, the web.config URL does not need the SSO URL to the 7 environment)
Rename all Roles in 7 so that none have spaces.
Ensure that the Version 9 environment has the ASP.Net Impersonation enabled in IIS. I think the documentation says it should only have Windows Authentication, but it must have the ASP.Net impersonation as well, or else your eSession table reports the trusted account in the eUserName column instead of the user. Otherwise it still appears to authenticate OK.
Version 9 SSO SAP must be used in the 9 environment. You cannot use the 7 SAP that you used before. When you modify this, (in our case to remove domain name) be sure you put this in the right place. This is different location in the file than where it was in the 7 environment SSO script.

We are going to build our dev environment again, and assuming we have it all documented and correct, expect to rollout version 9 with side-by-side in December timeframe in production.

I will post back here with status.