Instance Deployment: To Set Up a Group of Customer Portal Instances

In this activity, you will learn how to create a group of Customer Portal instances.

Story

Suppose that you are the system administrator of your company, and you need to set up a group of two Customer Portal instances with the Retail group identifier.

Process Overview

In this activity, you will deploy two Customer Portal instances and specify the Retail group identifier in their configuration files.

System Preparation

Before you begin doing this activity, make sure that you have performed the following prerequisite activity: Instance Deployment: To Deploy an Instance with Demo Data.

Step 1: Deploying Customer Portal Instances

To deploy the first Customer Portal instance that will be included in the Retail group, do the following:

  1. On the Start menu, click Acumatica ERP Configuration to open the MYOB Acumatica ERP Configuration Wizard.
  2. On the Welcome page, click Deploy a New Acumatica ERP Instance.
  3. On the Database Server Connection page, specify the following settings, and then click Next to proceed to the next page:
    • Server Type: Microsoft SQL Server
    • Server Name: (local)
    • Windows Authentication: Selected
  4. On the Database Configuration page, specify the following settings, and then click Next to proceed to the next page:
    1. Connect to an Existing Database: Selected
    2. Available Databases on the Server: The database that is used by the MYOB Acumatica instance for which you want to create the Customer Portal instance
    Important:
    For a group of Customer Portal instances, the database must be the same across all instance.
  5. On the Tenant Setup page, select the tenant that is used by the MYOB Acumatica instance, and click Next.
  6. On the Database Connection page, select Windows Authentication.
  7. Click Next.
  8. On the Instance Configuration page, specify the following settings:
    1. Instance Name: Portal1
    2. Create Self-Service Portal: Selected
    3. Local Path to the Instance: The path on the local computer to this application instance
      Tip:
      The path looks like C:\Program Files\Acumatica ERP\Portal1.
  9. Click Next.
  10. On the Website Configuration page, verify the following settings, and then click Next to proceed to the next page:
    • Website Settings: Default Web Site
    • Create Virtual Directory: Selected
    • Virtual Directory Name: Portal1
    • Use Existing Application Pool: Selected
    • List of existing application pools: DefaultAppPool
  11. On the Confirmation of Configuration page, do the following:
    1. Check the configuration settings that you have specified.
    2. Click Finish to deploy this Customer Portal instance.
After the deployment of the Portal1 instance is complete, repeat the instructions and deploy another Customer Portal instance. On the Instance Configuration page, specify Portal2 as the name for the second instance and ensure that this name is also specified in the Virtual Directory Name box on the Website Configuration page.
Important:
When you deploy the Portal2 instance, make sure that you specify the same database on the Database Configuration page as you did for the Portal1 instance.

Step 2: Specifying the Group Identifier for the Customer Portal Instances

To specify that the Customer Portal instances that you have deployed in the previous step belong to the Retail group of instances, do the following for each of the instances:

  1. Open the web.config file corresponding to the Customer Portal instance.
    Tip:
    This file is usually located in %Program Files%\Acumatica ERP\<instance name>, where <instance name> is the name of the Customer Portal instance—that is Portal1 or Portal2.
  2. In the file, find the appSettings section.
  3. In the PortalSiteID setting, which represents the group identifier of the Customer Portal instance, specify the Retail value as follows.
    <add key="PortalSiteID" value="Retail" />
  4. Save the web.config file; this causes the system to automatically restart.