Unable to find Dynamics AX Web Project template in Visual Studio 2008

Here is some of the teething problems I encountered recently when start developing on Dynamics AX 2009 Enterprise Portal (hope it won't be too late to learn EP!) :-

1) Unable to find Dynamics AX Web Project template in Visual Studio 2008
Although AX Enterprise Portal developers tools has been installed on the MOSS / SharePoint EP server, the Dynamics AX Web Project template still cannot be found in Visual Studio. This is a standard issue with AX 2009 Enterprise Portal developers tools where it only works fine on the account that doing the installation. The AX template is not automatically deployed to other user accounts. The blog post here provides a very details troubleshooting steps: http://mbsturk.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/missing-ax-ep-web-project-in-visual.html.

2) When opening the Dynamics AX Web Project in Visual Studio, the following error message is displayed
"Unable to connect to Microsoft Dynamics AX. The Dynamics AX Enterprise Portal Tools are not available".
To resolve this issue, verify that the configuration for .NET Business Connector is correct using the AX Client Configuration Utility. One quick way I always use to verify the Business Connector configuration is to export the active configuration to an .axc file and open it directly to see whether an AX Client session could be established successfully.

3) Changes made in Visual Studio not reflected in Enterprise Portal
By default, when you save the changes made in Enterprise Portal, for example, modification to a User Control, it will automatically reflected in Enterprise Portal. If this does not work, you can manually deploy the User Control modification by go to AOT\Web Files\Web Controls, right-click the Web Controls node and choose Deploy. When you save the User Controls changes in Visual Studio, the modification is saved directly to the web controls object in AOT\Web Files\Web Controls. Be sure to restore the modified Web controls object (right-click > select Restore) first before you do the deployment. Visual Studio will use the active Client configuration to determine which layer the changes to be saved in.

Happy EP...ing!