What’s new in XrmToolBox world

If you are using the latest version of XrmToolBox, then you should see this popup when launching it
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This was the super cool hidden feature of the previous version! It works (I’m relieved…)
In this new release of XrmToolBox, there is three new features, as described below
Optimization in plugin development
Thanks to Daryl LaBar, one of the developer of other XrmToolBox plugins, the way to develop plugins for XrmToolBox has never been so easy. All you have to do is to create a user control that inherits from PluginBase class. All the connectivity is handle by the base class and you just have to focus on what your tool should do.
Daryl added also helper classes to handle asynchronous call in a really easy way. Read his blog article on this topic.
The documentation on CodePlex project page explains how to use the new development model.
A new tool : Metadata Browser
Even if Microsoft delivers a metadata browser solution in the CRM SDK package, it is just a pain to install this solution in each organization I am working on. So I developed a XrmToolBox plugin that does the same job : allows you to browse metadata from your organization. It’s a first version and I may have forgotten some features but I think it’s quite complete.
How does it work?
The first action of the tool is to retrieve the list of entities
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By double clicking on an item, you can then see the metadata for the selected entity
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You can browse all set of metadata included attributes, relationships and privileges. You can also see these items in lists for better reading
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Again, when double clicking on an item, its properties are displayed in a property grid
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To come back to previous screen, just click on button “Hide Panel”
You will have the possibility to select columns you want to display in lists and their order. This configuration will be saved to avoid to reconfigure the layout you want each time.
As usual, this tool is included in XrmToolBox package available on CodePlex
Another new tool : User Settings Utility
This one was asked by my fellow MVP Scott Sewell. It allows to update user personal settings in bulk like this solution does.
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Again, this tool is included in XrmToolBox package available on CodePlex

Comments

Anonymous said…
Does it also allows to export as xls?
October 16, 2014 at 1:54 PM
Markus Konrad said…
Very nice, thanks Tanguy.
October 17, 2014 at 1:29 PM
Rob Boyers said…
Hi Tanguy,
It would be good if the grid on the left also showed existing personal option values so that we can see which users require their settings to be changed. As it stands, the crm2011usersettings tool will still be needed by an administrator in order to monitor these settings.
Thanks
Rob Boyers
October 27, 2014 at 11:44 AM
Jonas Rapp said…
Hi Tanguy!

You mention a blog article by Daryl LaBar, but I can't find the link...

/Jonas
October 29, 2014 at 7:29 AM
Tanguy said…
I updated the blog post to add the link.

Here it is : http://blog.allegient.com/how-to-make-it-easier-to-create-a-plugin-for-the-xrmtoolbox
October 29, 2014 at 9:38 AM
Unknown said…
This article was very helpful in answering alot of questions about Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I will be looking forward to such companies like Evincible Solutions. Thanks for posting.
November 6, 2014 at 6:29 PM
Unknown said…
Hi Tanguy,

It would be highly appreciated if you make a tool like stunware for crm 2013 , that will help us to create a query from the designer and convert into fetchxml and QueryExpression

Thanks
November 26, 2014 at 10:24 PM
Tanguy said…
FetchXmlBuilder was released this week. It helps to create fetchxml query
See Codeplex project to get the link to this external plugin for XrmToolBox
November 26, 2014 at 10:31 PM
Unknown said…
The tool seems to be very useful for the organizations, specially one of the features i.e., all the connectivity is handle by the base class and one just have to focus on what the tool should do. CRM software
January 21, 2015 at 12:07 PM
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