XRM Toolbox – Important tools for Admins and Developers
What is XRM toolbox?
XrmToolBox is a Windows application that connects to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, providing tools to ease customization and configuration tasks. It is shipped with more than 30 plugins to make administration, customization or configuration tasks easier and less time consuming.
XRMToolBox is free of cost, but you can donate to support development.
In this blog, I will list down the top 5 tools from XRM toolbox for both developers and CRM Administrators.
How to Use it?
Documentation is available through the wiki of XrmToolBox Github’s repository. You will find information about prerequisites, a list of known existing plugins, help on how to connect to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment, and much much more..
Top Tools of XRM toolbox for Developers.
1. WebResources Manager
Author- MscrmTools
Description – Manage your webresources easily. This tool has saved me hours of time for creating, updating and managing the web resources for Dynamics CRM. This is a must have for all the Developers
2. SiteMap Editor
Author – MscrmTools
Description – Manage the SiteMap with no XML edition. Editing Sitemap XML is scary for any developer as any mistake in XML can make the Entire CRM unusable.
This tool helps to edit your sitemap components. You can easily create areas and subareas, update the order and copy/ paste components from one area to another. You can also update all the sub area details like icon, titles for multiple languages etc.
3. Ribbon Workbench 2016
Author – Scott Durow
Description – Edit the Dynamics CRM Ribbon or Command Bar from inside the XrmToolbox.
By installing the Ribbon Workbench you’ll quickly be performing customisations that were previously only possible by time consuming and error-prone manual editing of RibbonDiff Xml.
Learn More – https://www.develop1.net/public/rwb/ribbonworkbench.aspx
4. FetchXML Builder
Author – Jonas Rapp
Description – The tool will assist in three major areas:
- Constructing FetchXML in ways that Advanced Find cannot – aggregates – outer joins – “has no”-queries – attributes from multi-level linked entities
- Querying CRM for information not (easily) found in the CRM UI – system / internal entities – attributes hidden in CRM UI – join on other fields than relationships
- Developer assistance – Generate C# QueryExpression code from fetch xml – Generate OData query string from fetch xml – Easy to use UI to compose queries for reports in CRM The tool reads metadata from CRM to assist with selecting entities, attributes, relations and to perform validation of condition values. To make it more appealing, there is also the possibility to have it show “Friendly names”, which will replace the technical names of entities and attributes with their display names in the users’ currently selected language, much like Advanced Find does.
5. Metadata Document Generator
Author – MscrmTools
Description – A tool to generate excel and word document with entities and attributes information. You’ll no longer have to write “by hand” these awful tables full of metadata information.
Top Tools of XRM toolbox for Developers:
1. Your User Security – Magnified
Author – NORRIQ Belgium
Description – Provides a detailed overview of a specified System User’s security. Very helpful to identify the exact permission a user has on entity based on all the roles assigned to him
2. Form related tools
Author – MscrmTools
Description – Set of tools for XrmToolBox regarding form management4
3. Solution Components Mover
Author – MscrmTools
Description – Transfer solution components across solutions. Again a big time saver for moving components from one solution to another.
4. User Settings and Utility
Author – MscrmTools
Description – Manage and update All user’s personal settings in Bulk
5. Attribute Usage Inspector
Author – MscrmTools
Description – Inspects the usage of attributes per entity. Admins can review which attributes are not used across all entities and which are used most.