If you are a seasoned CRM/XRM developer, you must have heard about XrmToolbox. If you have, you can simply ignore this post. BUT if you have not then you MUST read on.
This post is about XrmToolbox (http://www.xrmtoolbox.com/) and its plugins which can improve your efficiency and accelerate overall development speed. I intend to list all the default plugins and provide more details on plugins as and when time permits. So here is a list of plugins which gets installed by default.
| Sr. No. |
Name |
Description |
| 1 | Access Checker | This plugin allows you to check access rights for a user. This can come extremely handy to figure out if you have provided proper security privilege or not. |
| 2 | Assembly Recovery Tool | This plugin lets you export Plugin Assemblies from a CRM deployment. |
| 3 | Attribute Bulk Updater | It allows to quickly set the following properties of attributes of a given entity. 1. Valid for Advanced Find 2. Valid for Audit 3. Requirement Level |
| 4 | Audit Center | It allows you to define audit settings – from Global Audit Settings to Attributes on Entities. It gives you everything that you would do with Audit settings in one screen. |
| 5 | Bulk Form Attribute Manager |
This plugin provides a single window to set the following settings on multiple attributes. |
| 6 | Chart Manager | It allows you to import/export chart definitions in bulk. It also allows you to make changes to the ChartML. |
| 7 | Easy Translator | This plugin exports and imports translations with contextual information |
| 8 | FetchXML Tester | Does this one need description? :-/ |
| 9 | FLS Bulk Updater | Many CRM/XRM implementations require you to configure Field Level Security. If you try doing it using just the Dynamics CRM Web Interface it can be really time consuming and headache inducing. |
| 10 | Form Libraries Manager | This plugin helps you to add multiple JavaScript libraries to multiple forms. |
| 11 | Form Parameter Manager | If you need to pass parameters to Dynamics CRM forms, this plugin simplifies the process. |
| 12 | Iconator | This plugin helps you to add icons to custom entities in Dynamics CRM. |
| 13 | Import/Export NN Relationships | This plugin helps in importing and exporting N:N relationships. |
| 14 | Metadata Browser | Good ol’ Metadata browser (on steroids … just give it a try to experience how fast it is). |
| 15 | Metadata Document Generator | This plugin generates very nice Excel and Word document based on Metadata |
| 16 | Privileges Discovery | This plugin will help you find roles which implement a given security privilege |
| 17 | Role Updater | A simpler UI to update set or role/s with Security privileges |
| 18 | Script Finder | If you ask yourself how many JavaScript libraries are being used in a given CRM solution and where… this plugin is what you need. |
| 19 | SiteMap Editor | This plugin provides you finer control over SiteMap elements. It allows you to import/export and understand how SiteMap actually work. |
| 20 | Solution Components Mover | This plugin helps you to move Solution components from one solution to another. |
| 21 | Solution Import | Yet another simple solution to a terrible user experience (due to limitations of web browsers and web applications in general). This plugin allows you to select a folder and allows it to import it or if you already have a zip ready then do a simple drag-n-drop. |
| 22 | Solution Transfer Tool | How many times you find yourself in a situation in which you already have a solution deployed on one server and you need to transfer (Copy) it to other server? If you are in regular CRM/XRM development then I’d say every other day. It is true, you copy solutions from Dev to Test to UAT to Pre-Prod and finally Prod. If you do this via regular CRM Web UI the process is quite cumbersome. Use this plugin to make the solution transfer process a breeze. |
| 23 | Sync Filter Manager | This plugin helps you manager Offline, Outlook and Server side Sync. As such with advent of Dynamics CRM 2015 I am not sure how useful and meaningful this plugin will be. |
| 24 | User Roles Manager | Manage all roles for the users and teams available in a given CRM deployment |
| 25 | User Settings Utility | How would you change User Settings for 7000 users? Yes… I don’t need to explain what this life-saver plugin does. |
| 26 | View Layout Replicator | Most of the CRM deployment we do, we need to keep layout (columns, order and width) of views in a sync. For a large implementation it can be a huge pain. This plugin simplifies the process. Define the layout in one view and then replicate it to other views in a single click. |
| 27 | View Transfer Tool | Twin brother of View Layout Replicator, allows you to quickly transfer Views from one CRM deployment to another. |
| 28 | Web Resources Manager | The Ultimate Web Resource Manager for Dynamics CRM. Forget about copy pasting content (for HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML etc.) just select the files and upload them in a click. Additionally, this plugin beautifies the code and also provides you a nice way to organize Web resources |
| 29 | Early Bound Generator | I am not very PRO early bound code (for sole reason of flexibility), but every now and then we encounter a situation where people would want to use Early Bound code. This plugin provides a nice UI to the command line operations of CrmSvcUtil.exe (part of CRM SDK). It is the most comprehensive plugin available today in case you are using Early Bound Code. In one case, I was able to reduce EBC size by 1/3rd (from 7 MB to 2 MB). Please note that this doesn’t come bundled with Xrmtoolbox and needs to be downloaded from: https://xrmearlyboundgenerator.codeplex.com/ |
| 30 | FetchXmlBuilder | This plugin allows you to write/edit FetchXml and test it from the same screen and provides a nice UX. It has many other features that will help any developer, no matter S/he is a novice or an expert. A MUST have plugin. Please note that this is not a standard plugin of Xrmtoolbox and needs to be downloaded separately from: http://fxb.xrmtoolbox.com/ |
I have deliberately not included the following plugins (not that they are not important. I just didn’t find them being used as widely as others)
- Sync event execution order editor
There are many other important resources which you can find at: http://www.xrmtoolbox.com/. Including installation, configuration and basic troubleshooting.
Does it work on 2016?
Yes. It will work. You just have to download the latest version.