Expose Web Service using SSL in Business Central On-Premise

Introduction:

I had a requirement where the Web Services / APIs in NAV and Business Central On-premise needed to be exposed outside the VM to be consumed by third-party applications.
Also, this blog is a continuation of my previous blogs on NAVUserPassword and Single Sign On(SSO) 
In this blog, let us see how to expose the Webservice / API URLs outside the server and consume them.

Pre-requisites:

• Microsoft Dynamics Business Central On-premise
• Static IP assigned to the Server
• DNS configured with SSL or Self-signed certificate.

Demonstration:

1. Changes to Business Central On-Premise / NAV Administration Console: Inside the Administration Console, you need to make sure that either you Business Central already has a way to be authenticated with the DNS link that you have provided. You can refer to my blogs  NAVUserPassword and Single Sign On(SSO) for this

After that make sure you enable SSL and change the Base URL to '<https://YourDomain:Port/ServerInstance>'. Also, make sure to allow the Inbound and Outbound from the Firewall settings as well.

Changes to Administration Console

2. Changes to Base URL in Web Services:

After you have restarted the Server Instance and login to Business Central and navigate to Web Services, you will notice that there is a change to the URL inside the ODATA and SOAP URLs.

Change to Base URL in ODATA and SOAP URLs

3. Calling the Web Service through the browser inside the server:

Simply creating a GET request and providing the credentials, you will also be able to call the ODATA URL and exchange data from inside the server.

Calling the ODATA URL from inside the Server / VM

4. Calling the Web Service through the browser outside the server:
Similarly, a final test to confirm that these URLs are accessible outside the VMs as well.

Calling the ODATA URL from outside browsers

Conclusion:

I deliberately have written this blog because, whenever there are any issues configuring such requirements the most common solution available are done is using costly integration solutions because they have an On-Premise Agent which helps in seamless integration.

I want to make these web services / APIs accessible anywhere over the internet and can be integrated using a custom solution or apps.

I hope this blog helps in documenting the steps for such a process as well.

Thanks for reading.