Next Button Grayed Out in Internet-Facing Deployment Configuration Wizard

While recently assisting a colleague with setting up IFD, we stumbled upon an interesting bug with CRM 2016 in which we could not advance in the IFD wizard because the “Next” button was grayed out and disabled. No matter what we typed in the field, it would not enable the button. Tried an IISReset, restarting CRM services, and even a reboot but they all failed to help.

Realizing this had to be an issue within MSCRM_CONFIG database, we took a look at the tables that hold the IFD properties that we input in these wizards. What we found was that somehow the NVarCharColumn value of ExternalRelyingPartyPassiveIdentifier in the FederationProviderProperties table was set to “uri:ifdMicrosoftCRM”. Typically we would see the Auth URL in this field so we updated it manually to “https://auth.domain.com” in SQL. Make sure to include the “https://” - even though we do not enter this in the field during the configuration wizard, it gets appended automatically and set in the database. Issue an IISRESET on the CRM server and then re-launch the CRM Deployment Manager.

Please note that editing the database manually via SQL is not supported by Microsoft and you are doing so at your own risk. Always take backups and use caution.