Importing AX Projects (.XPO) & Deploying Web Controls into Enterprise Portal: Resolution for Controls not showing in the “Managed content item” drop down.

       
Recently I seriously struggled for some time in exporting Web Controls in the AOT in my development environment, and importing them into the staging environment. I created a project to include all of my web controls, by adding the related web control nodes from [AOT > Web > Web Files > Web Controls]. I then imported this project into staging, and went into Enterprise Portal to setup my Web Part Page with my custom web controls in the AOT. The problem however was that when modifying my shared web part (a Dynamics User Control Web Part), the “Managed content item” drop down did not contain my custom web controls. Oddly enough, I could create a new project in Visual Studio, and select the “Add user control from AOT” option, and my custom controls were in the list. So what exactly was going on??

A veteran Axapta developer, whom I have the privilege of occasionally tapping for information if all else fails, revealed to me that Enterprise Portal does not pull its list of Web Controls from the [AOT > Web > Web Files > Web Controls] node, like Visual Studio does, but rather, in order to see your controls in the “Managed content item” drop down, you must include the references to the controls that are found in the [AOT > Web > Web Content > Managed] node. So when I added these references to my project in the development environment, exported the project, and then imported the project into staging, and then restarting both the AOS and IIS for good measure… My custom web controls finally showed up and could be used.