CRM Online web services – (407) Proxy Authentication Required

I am currently in the process of integrating several back-end systems with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, utilising BizTalk as the integration hub platform.

WCF, and specifically the “Consume Adapter Service” within Visual Studio, abstracts the creation of CRM Schemas to the point that the process is just like any other WCF service.

However, I came to a screeching halt when trying to test the creation of any Entity within CRM Online. The ISA Server was complaining, resulting in the following exception being thrown:

System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (407) Proxy Authentication Required.

None of the inbuilt authentication settings within the WCF-Custom Transport Properties window were any help (trust me, I tried ‘em all), the Adapter appears to ignore any Proxy Authentication settings.

The solution is to instruct WCF, at the Windows Process level, to use the default Windows proxy settings. This is done by adding the following section into your BTSNTSvc.exe.config file:

  <system.net>
    <defaultProxy useDefaultCredentials="true">
      <proxy usesystemdefault="True" />
    </defaultProxy>
  </system.net>

This is, however, a less-than-ideal solution, as it applies a blanket setting to all BizTalk Host Instances on the server.
Note: If you are in a 64-bit environment, and using a 64-bit Host Instance, you need to make the change in the BTNTSvc64.exe.config file instead.