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I have been playing over the last week and a bit with the newly released Customer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 in conjunction with the CRM SDK 4.0.12 which contains some new libraries called Advanced Developer Extensions as well as the Portal Development Framework.

In my opinion the Customer Portal Accelerator is a fantastic accelerator and a vast improvement over the previous eService, Events Management and Portal Integration Accelerators (It is now all of these combined).

One of the only drawbacks is that the out of the box accelerator only works with Windows Live Authentication, which is great, but there is definitely quite a few scenarios where this is not ideal.

The accelerator was actually created by the guys at ADXStudio and is essentially a lightweight version of their ADXStudio xRM product, so the simplest way to get other authentication mechanism would be to upgrade to their full ADXStudio xRM product, which I would highly recommend as there are some really fantastic components available.

However if that is not an option then it is actually pretty straight forward to modify the existing Customer Portal Accelerator to use CRM to authenticate the user and I will go through an example of how you could do it in this post.

I am going to assume you have already deployed the “Out of the Box” Customer Portal Accelerator as per the instructions provided in the download.

So you should be starting off with a CRM environment that looks like this :

and a Customer Portal site that looks like this :

with the sign in screen showing Windows Live ID sign in :

The great thing is that pretty much everything we need to handle the authentication from the CRM side of things is already there. We can use the fields that are imported by the Customer Portal Accelerator on the Web Authentication Tab of the contact record.

The one change I made though was to remove the “Reset Password To” field and put the actual “Password” (adx_password) field onto the form in it’s place.

I then added the following JavaScript code to the Contact_OnLoad event to modify the password field to replace the text characters with a normal password mask so that the password is not visible to users.

//Password Field 

var pwd = document.createElement("<input type='password' tabIndex='1911'>");

pwd.value = crmForm.all.adx_password.DataValue;

if (crmForm.all.adx_password.DataValue == null)

{

pwd.value = '';

}

crmForm.all.adx_password_d.appendChild(pwd);

pwd.onkeyup = function()

{

    crmForm.all.adx_password.DataValue = pwd.value;

};

crmForm.all.adx_password.style.display = 'none';

You could go a step further and add a plug-in to the Contact Pipeline to encrypt the password, but that is the topic for another post.

That’s about it for CRM. The next step is to start modifying the “Customer-Portal-R2” website.

Modify the Web.config file and replace the current <authentication> section with the following :

<authentication mode="Forms">
      <forms name=".ASPXAUTH" loginUrl="login"
       defaultUrl="default.aspx" protection="All" timeout="30" path="/"
       requireSSL="false" slidingExpiration="true"
       cookieless="UseDeviceProfile" domain=""
       enableCrossAppRedirects="false">
      </forms>
    </authentication>

Comment out the exiting “CrmMembershipProvider” and replace it with the code snippet below.

<!--<membership defaultProvider="CrmMembershipProvider">
        <providers>
            <add name="CrmMembershipProvider" type="Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Web.Security.LiveIdMembershipProvider" liveIdConnectionStringName="Live"/>
        </providers>
    </membership>-->
<membership defaultProvider="CustomCRMProvider">
  <providers>
    <clear/>
    <add name="CustomCRMProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider" connectionStringName="Xrm" applicationName="/" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" requiresUniqueEmail="true" passwordFormat="Hashed" minRequiredPasswordLength="1" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0"/>
  </providers>
</membership>

Modify the Pages/Login.aspx page be replacing the Live Login Control with the standard ASP.Net login control.

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentBottom" runat="server">
    <%--<crm:LiveIdLoginStatus ID="LiveIdLink" runat="server"
        LoginImageUrl="http://www.passportimages.com/1033/signin.gif"
        LogoutImageUrl="http://www.passportimages.com/1033/signout.gif" />--%>
        <asp:Login
            ID="Login1" runat="server" onauthenticate="Login1_Authenticate">
        </asp:Login>
</asp:Content>

Modify / Replace the code in the Login.aspx.cs page as detailed below :

public partial class Login : System.Web.UI.Page
{

    private XrmDataContext _crmContext;
    private contact _loginContact;
    protected XrmDataContext CrmContext
    {
        get { return _crmContext ?? (_crmContext = new XrmDataContext()); }
    }

    protected contact LoginContact
    {
        get
        {
            return _loginContact ??
                (_loginContact = CrmContext.contacts
                    .FirstOrDefault(c => c.adx_username == Login1.UserName
                        && (c.adx_password == Login1.Password)));
        }
    }

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        if ((User != null && User.Identity != null) && User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
        {
            var redirectUrl = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(Request.QueryString["ReturnUrl"])
                ? Request["ReturnUrl"]
                : !string.IsNullOrEmpty(Request.QueryString["URL"])
                    ? Request["URL"]
                    : "/";

            Response.Redirect(redirectUrl);
        }
        else
        {
            //var inviteQueryString = string.IsNullOrEmpty(Request["InvitationCode"]) ? string.Empty : "?InvitationCode=" + Request["InvitationCode"];

            //var registrationUrl = SiteContext.Current.Website.GetPageBySiteMarkerName("Live User Registration").GetUrl();

            //LiveIdLink.RegistrationUrl = registrationUrl + inviteQueryString;
        }
    }

    protected void Login1_Authenticate(object sender, System.Web.UI.WebControls.AuthenticateEventArgs e)
    {
        if (LoginContact == null)
        {
            e.Authenticated = false;
        }
        else
        {
            if (LoginContact.adx_username == Login1.UserName)
            {
                if (LoginContact.adx_changepasswordatnextlogon.Value)
                {
                    var page = SiteContext.Current.Website.GetPageBySiteMarkerName("ChangePassword") as Xrm.adx_webpage;
                    string redirectURL = page.GetUrl() + "?UserName=" + Server.UrlEncode(Login1.UserName) + "&Password=" + Server.UrlEncode(Login1.Password);
                    Response.Redirect(redirectURL);
                }
                else
                {
                    LoginContact.adx_lastsuccessfullogon = DateTime.Now.Date;
                    var coreContext = new CoreDataContext();

                    coreContext.UpdateObject(LoginContact);
                    coreContext.SaveChanges();

                    e.Authenticated = true;
                    FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLoginPage(Login1.UserName, true);
                }
            }
            else
            {
                e.Authenticated = false;
            }
        }

    }
}

Ensure your “using” declarations include the following :

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Profile;
using System.Web.Security;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Cms;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Core;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Web;
using Xrm;

Modify “MasterPages/Default.master” to replace the Live Login Control with an ASP.Net Loginstatus control and comment out the LiveLoginStatus command in the Page_Load event.

<div id="hd-links">
                        <asp:LoginView runat="server">
                            <LoggedInTemplate>
                                <%= SiteContext.Current.CurrentUserContact.GetPropertyValue<string>("fullname") %> &ndash;
                                <asp:HyperLink NavigateUrl='<%$ CrmSiteMap: SiteMarker=Profile, Url %>' Text='<%$ Snippet: Profile Link Text, Manage Account %>' runat="server" /> &ndash;
                            </LoggedInTemplate>
                        </asp:LoginView>
                        <%--<crm:LiveIdLoginStatus ID="LiveLoginStatus" runat="server" />--%>
                        <%--<asp:Login ID="Login1" runat="server">
                        </asp:Login>--%>
                        <asp:LoginStatus ID="LoginStatus1" runat="server" LogoutPageUrl="logout"></asp:LoginStatus>
                    </div>

I then added a Logout.aspx page to the Pages folder, the contents of which is just the following in the .cs file.

using System;
using System.Linq;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Access;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Cms;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Core;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Web;
using Xrm;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using Site.Library;
using System.Web.Security;

namespace Site.Pages
{
    public partial class Logout : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            FormsAuthentication.SignOut();
            var page = SiteContext.Current.Website.GetPageBySiteMarkerName("Home") as Xrm.adx_webpage;
            Response.Redirect(page.GetUrl());
        }
    }
}

You may have noticed in the updated Login.aspx page that there is reference to a Change Password page, this would allow us to ensure that our users change their password at next logon (a flag that already exists on the Web Authentication tab in CRM). To facilitate this we need to add an additional page called ChangePassword.aspx which should ideally be based on our existing master page to ensure a consistent look and feel. The ChangePassword.aspx page has a standard ASP.Net Change Password control.

<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/MasterPages/Default.master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ChangePassword.aspx.cs" Inherits="Site.Pages.ChangePassword" %>

<asp:Content ID="Content3" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentBottom" runat="server">
<asp:ChangePassword ID="ChangePassword1" runat="server"
        onchangedpassword="ChangePassword1_ChangedPassword"
        onchangingpassword="ChangePassword1_ChangingPassword">
</asp:ChangePassword>
</asp:Content>

and the code-behind is as follows :

using System;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Cms;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Web;
using System.Linq;
using Xrm;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Profile;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Portal.Core;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

namespace Site.Pages
{
    public partial class ChangePassword : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
        private XrmDataContext _crmContext;
        private contact _loginContact;
        protected XrmDataContext CrmContext
        {
            get { return _crmContext ?? (_crmContext = new XrmDataContext()); }
        }

        protected contact LoginContact
        {
            get
            {
                return _loginContact ??
                    (_loginContact = CrmContext.contacts
                        .FirstOrDefault(c => c.adx_username == Server.UrlDecode(Request.QueryString["UserName"].ToString())
                            && (c.adx_password == Server.UrlDecode(Request.QueryString["Password"].ToString()))));
            }
        }

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {

        }

        protected void ChangePassword1_ChangedPassword(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {

            Response.Redirect("../login");

        }

        protected void ChangePassword1_ChangingPassword(object sender, LoginCancelEventArgs e)
        {
            LoginContact.adx_password = ChangePassword1.NewPassword;
            LoginContact.adx_lastpasswordchange = DateTime.Now.Date;
            LoginContact.adx_changepasswordatnextlogon = false;
            var coreContext = new CoreDataContext();

            coreContext.UpdateObject(LoginContact);
            coreContext.SaveChanges();
            Response.Redirect("login");
        }
    }
}

You may have noticed in some of the code that we are using the same URL rewriting that the Customer Portal Accelerator already uses for our new pages

var page = SiteContext.Current.Website.GetPageBySiteMarkerName("Change Password") as Xrm.adx_webpage;

this will require us to add these pages under the content management section inside CRM in order for the site to work correctly. The 2 pages we need to add are the ChangePassword.aspx and the Logout.aspx page, these pages are added as follows (repeat the below steps for each of the pages)

Create a new Page Template for each of the pages

Create a new Web Page for each of the pages

Create a new Site Marker for each of the pages

Next you can create a contact in CRM, fill in the minimum required fields as well as the Username, Password and Logon Enabled checkbox on the Web Authentication tab. You can also check the “User must change password at next logon” to force that.

You may also want to modify the standard Portal signup workflows that ship with the Customer Portal Accelerator to mimic your environments requirements.

I have attached copies of all the modified files below, including an export of the Customer Portal website from CRM, using the new WebsiteCopy tool