Troubleshooting GP Web Client Error: An unexpected error has occurred. Press the Sign-in button to reconnect to the application.

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By Steve Endow

Others have posted articles about troubleshooting issues with the GP Web Client (such as Mariano's comprehensive series here), but since this is the first time I've done the troubleshooting, and since my problem was pretty simple, I thought I would document my experience.

I have a server with the Dynamics GP Web Client installed and configured.  It worked fine back when I performed the initial install, but it has been a few months since I've used the Web Client.

While trying to setup the new GP 2013 R2 workflow features today, I tested the Web Client and received this error in Internet Explorer:

Unexpected Error
An unexpected error has occurred. Press the Sign-in button to reconnect to the application.
Correlation ID: a238ed59-ea0e-46f7-b4ef-482f2e370372 

This is a generic error, so the error message itself doesn't offer any clues.

One thing I recently learned at the reIMAGINE 2014 conference is what a "Correlation ID" is.  That unique ID is assigned to a web client process and allows you to trace a process in Event Viewer and other logs when testing or troubleshooting.  If you have 20 people using the Web Client and need to troubleshoot an error for one user, the ID lets you identify errors or messages for that particular user.  So while that ID can be helpful in troubleshooting, it doesn't have any meaning or explain what caused the error.

To learn more about the error, I opened Event Viewer and navigated to the Dynamics application log.  There I found a pile of shiny red errors.

Starting at the top, I reviewed this error.  Notice the GUID at the beginning of the error--this matches the Correlation ID I saw in Internet Explorer, telling me that this error is related to my browser session.

a238ed59-ea0e-46f7-b4ef-482f2e370372:An unexpected error has occurred.  Press the Sign-in button to reconnect to the application.::System.Web.HttpUnhandledException (0x80004005): Exception of type 'System.Web.HttpUnhandledException' was thrown. ---> System.ServiceModel.EndpointNotFoundException: There was no endpoint listening at https://webclient:48650/SessionCentralService that could accept the message. This is often caused by an incorrect address or SOAP action. See InnerException, if present, for more details. ---> System.Net.WebException: Unable to connect to the remote server ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it [2001:0:5ef5:79fb:8fb:201f:3f57:e65b]:48650
   at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.DoConnect(EndPoint endPointSnapshot, SocketAddress socketAddress)
   at System.Net.ServicePoint.ConnectSocketInternal(Boolean connectFailure, Socket s4, Socket s6, Socket& socket, IPAddress& address, ConnectSocketState state, IAsyncResult asyncResult, Exception& exception)

Next, I saw the message "There was no endpoint listening".  If you've worked with eConnect, you may have seen this error, which can be caused when the eConnect service is not running.  The message helpfully indicated that the SessionCentralService was not available, so that led me to check Windows Services.

Sure enough, when I found the GP Session Central Service, it was not running.  Great, just start it up, right?  Not so fast--apparently there was a reason why it wasn't running.

And there it is.  The service can't start due to a password issue.  I hadn't set the "Password never expires" option for the service account, so the password had expired.  I fixed the account and the service started up properly.

With the service started, the web client started working again.

Fortunately, this particular web client error was very simple and easy to track down, but I think it's a nice simple example of web client troubleshooting.

Off to configure Workflow!

Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP for Dynamics GP and a Dynamics GP Certified IT Professional in Los Angeles.  He is the owner of Precipio Services, which provides Dynamics GP integrations, customizations, and automation solutions.

You can also find him on Google+ and Twitter

http://www.precipioservices.com