Management Reporter CU16 Now Available!

Management Reporter 2012 CU16 has been posted for download. This release includes the ability to use Management Reporter over HTTPS, and includes several quality fixes as well.

Here’s a summary of the new Management Reporter CU16 features:

·         HTTPS Support for Server and client components

·         Add Hebrew (he-il) localization

·         Additional fixes for product defects

There are a few prerequisites to make sure you have. Management Reporter 2012 CU16 requires SQL Server 2012 or higher. PowerShell 3.0 continues to be required. The Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 is also required, but is no longer automatically downloaded and prompted for installation.

For a complete list of prerequisites, review the system requirements.

HTTPS Feature Overview

This feature provides the ability to use HTTPS with Management Reporter 2012. The use of HTTPS and SSL provides an additional level of security to protect your financial data on your local network, your intranet, or from your cloud-based deployment. This feature enables secure communication with an https:// address when viewing reports in the web viewer, desktop viewer, and when designing reports.

This is an optional feature that will require removing and re-configuring the services after an upgrade. HTTPS  or during a new installation.

There are a few limitations to the HTTPS feature support, so keep these in mind:

  • The HTTPS feature will only work on Server 2008 R2 or later. Configuration will fail on Server 2008.
  • The Migration Wizard does not support HTTPS. You can continue to use the Migration Wizard with CU16, but can remove the services and enable HTTPS with your existing database after migration has completed.
  • All clients will need a certificate verifying that the server hosting the Management Reporter services is trusted. The certificate will need to be distributed and installed on all clients.The certificate can be a purchased certificate from a certificate authority, a domain certificate from Windows Certificate Services, or a self-signed certificate from the server hosting Management Reporter (a self-signed certificate is not recommended for production).

Server Installation

For configuring a self-signed certificate for testing, you can use the following steps:

Option 1: Use IIS Manager to create a self-signed certificate

This method requires the prerequisite of IIS Manager being installed on the MR Server.

  1. Start | Run | inetmgr on the Server
  2. Under the machine name double-click on server certificates and click create self-signed certificate
  3. Specify a friendly name for the certificate and select the location as personal certificate store

Option 2: Use PowerShell to create a self-signed certificate

Note: The flags may be slightly different because parameters may not be different in earlier or later versions of Windows. More information can be found on creating certificates here and here.

  1. Open PowerShell and use the following command, replacing the machine name for your local machine
    • New-SelfSignedCertificate -DnsName "ryantest.northamerica.corp.microsoft.com" -CertStoreLocation "cert:\LocalMachine\My"
  2. Open Certificate manager (Start | Run | certmgr.msc) or equivalent command to open certificate management in MMC
  3. Find the correct certificate. It will have an expiration date of today’s date + 1 year issued by your local machine issued to your local machine
  4. Right click and select all tasks |  export. The option selected for export file format should not matter.
  5. If prompted, choose whether or not to export the private key, but it is not required
  6. If prompted, select to secure the certificate
  7. Export to a file on your desktop
  8. Click into Trusted Root Certification Authority | Certificates
  9. All tasks | import
  10. Grab the file on desktop you just exported
  11. Agree to place certificates in trusted root certification authorities

Client Installation

Install this same certificate on each client machine under personal certificates, and in the trusted root certification authority store

  1. Export the certificate from the server using the steps above
  2. Copy the exported certificate file from the server to the local client
  3. Open the Certificate Manager (Start | Run | Certmgr.msc)
  4. Expand into Trusted Root Certification Authority and select the Certificates folder
  5. Right-click Certificates, click All tasks and select Import
  6. Browse to the certificate file that was exported from the server
  7. Agree to place certificates in trusted root certification authorities

In some cases, users can be prompted for authentication more often than required. The following settings can reduce or eliminate these login prompts.

  1. Add the Management Reporter server as a trusted site. This can be configured within Internet Options, Security, Trusted Sites. Use the Site button and add the server address while a report is currently open.
  2. Configure for automatic authentication. This can be configured within Internet Options, Security, Trusted Sites. Local Intranet options or similar settings with the option selected to use automatic login with current user name and password can be enabled.

 

For the Report Designer client, it will continue to connect to the HTTP port for initial connection, but will automatically use HTTPS after connected. For example, if your default HTTP port is 4712, and HTTPS port is 4713, you will enter the following address into the Report Designer client:

MRServer:4712

Known Issues

SSL cert registrations are not removed on uninstall

You may see the below error after multiple installations if there is an active sslcert registration existing for the current SSL port during configuration. You can view and delete these registrations manually with the following commands:

netsh http show sslcert
netsh http delete sslcert hostname=ryansandtest.northamerica.corp.microsoft.com:4713

Error message: An error occurred while checking existing companies in the Management Reporter application service. Additional information: System.ServiceModel.CommunicationException: An error occurred while making the request to https://ryansandtest.northamerica.corp.microsoft.com:4713/CompanyService.svc. This could be due to the fact that the server certificate is not configured properly with HTTP.SYS in the HTTPS case.

Version Information

Management Reporter CU16 Release 2.12.16000.17
Note: There are no changes to the data mart schema in this release, so no upgrade to the data mart database will be required.
You can view which ERP versions are supported by this release by reviewing our compatibility list here.

 

You can find the EN-US download for Management Reporter CU16 here: https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/northamerica/MR/downloads/service-packs/MROverview

Other localizations should be available in the next 72 hours.