Solving issues on EP pages

When working with EP (Enterprise Portal) in either AX 2012 or 2009 sometimes you will get errors, or to be more precise the web page will not load properly and also you won't get a clear description of what is the problem. That is because EP is not configured to display the actual error directly to the user.

 So in this case, here are a few things you can try:

 1. of course, first one, make sure you have debug enabled (in web.config debug set to true, stacktrace set to true, and customErrors set to Off);

The detailed steps for the actions above are as follows:
 a) First you need to navigate to your web.config file for your EP site. This is normally found at C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\normally_your_EP_site_port_number\;
 b) make a copy of the web.config file;
 c) replace the line <compilation batch="false" debug="false"> with <compilation batch="false" debug="true">
 d) replace the line  <customErrors mode="On" /> with <customErrors mode="Off" />
 e) replace the line  <SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="false" DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="250" AllowPageLevelTrace="false">  with     <SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="true" DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="250" AllowPageLevelTrace="false">
 
 After enabling debugging, just reload the page; the errors should be seen immediately in the page and point you in the right direction;

 2. next, look at the Windows Event Viewer; most of the times the errors are also logged there;

 3. in you are still unsure, one thing you can try, if the error is thrown on the page as a pop-up message, try to reload (F5) the page again; you may discover sometime that an AX (more friendly) error is being displayed  in the page this second time (in the form of the yellow bar) ...