Category: CRM

Open source tools, Solutions available for Developers and Admins

So today, I would like to give you a list of most useful tools available till now for Dynamics CRM which increases the developer productivity and helps Admins.

Some great tools you should check out to see if they could work in your organization.
  1. Fiddler – web debugging proxy
  2. Task Workflow Tools – custom workflow steps to extend your workflows
  3. Mobile Task Flows – walk users through tasks in the mobile or phone app
  4. Ribbon Workbench – visually edit the ribbon
  5. CRM Bookmarklets – JavaScript saved as bookmarks to “hack” your CRM (edit read only fields, show hidden fields, etc.)
  6. XRM Toolbox – It was shipped with 20 84  plugins as of April 2018 to handle several administration, customization or configuration tasks. Wiki
    • Access Checker
    • Assembly Recovery Tool
    • Attribute Bulk Updater
    • Audit Center
    • FetchXml Tester
    • Bulk Form Attribute Manager
    • FLS Bulk Updater
    • Form Libraries Manager
    • Form Parameter Manager
    • Import/Export NN relationships
    • Iconator
    • Metadata Browser
    • Metadata Document Generator
    • Privileges Discovery
    • Role Updater
    • Script Finder
    • SiteMap Editor
    • Solution Components Mover
    • Solution Import
    • Solution Transfer Tool
    • Sync Filter Manager
    • Synchronous events execution order editor
    • Easy Translator
    • User Roles Manager
    • User Settings Utility
    • View Layout Replicator
    • View Transfer Tool
    • Web Resources Manager
  7. Metablast – visual utility for exporting metadata
  8. CRM Snoop – Plugin Troubleshooting tool
  9. LinqPad – Easily run .NET code
  10. CRM DevTools – Chrome extension visible in the F12 developer area with lots of helpful functions for admins. It is worth it just to remember the debug and diagnostic links
  11. KingswaySoft – SSIS Integration toolkit
  12. Developer tool kit – New developer tool kit which was officially released
  13. Microsoft Fakes framework to unit test your CRM Code  – Test your undeveloped CRM Custom code using Microsoft Fakes framework
  14. CRM JavaScript Web API Service Utility – Used to write the latest javascript code using Web API
  15. Link Buddy –  It’s useful for converting logging/tracing details from CRM plug-ins, custom apps, etc. into click-able links that open the CRM record for which the GUID represents.
  16. MS CRM Security Roles to Excel Export – A Tool to export CRM Security roles into a Excel workbook.
  17. FetchXML Tester Online – Allows you to test FetchXML queries online without importing any solution or downloading any separate application.
  18. ILMerge – a .NET tool/utility which merges a number of dll’s into one dll, which is useful for creating plugins for online CRM.
  19. Tool to track performance – Check the CRM latency and bandwidth at https://CRMUrl.com/tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx (make sure to replace CRMUrl.com with the actual CRM URL).
  20. Convert FetchXML to SQL query – people find difficulties in converting the fetch xml query created from advanced find to a SQL query to retrieve records from Backend, use this tool to help the same
  21. Convert SQL query to Fetch XML – Two way round, use this to convert your backend queries to fetch XML to use them in your Code to retrieve data and metadata.
  22. Diagnostics Tool for On premise – Helps CRM developers and administrators to enable trace and devErrors on CRM server. Whereas its name only mentions CRM 2011, it is compatible with CRM 2013 and 2015 too (OnPremise only)
  23. Fetch XML Formatter 1, Fetch XML Formatter 2– Two similar tools for the same functionality, use according to your convenience. These were lightweight windows application that tool will be help you when you are extensively working with FetchXML in Javascript / C# code to get desired result. Takes fetchXML from Advance Find as an input and convert that into desired format, which can be used into Javascript / C# for further coding.
  24. Local option set to Global optionset converter – It’s purpose is to automate the task of converting a Local Option Set (an option set that is defined by and specific to a single entity. e.g. a CRM 4.0 Picklist), into a Global Option Set.
  25. Win Merge – A great tool to compare customizations.xml files taken from solutions
  26. CRM Rest Builder – A tool for CRM 2011/2013/2015/2016 Online & On Premise to generate JavaScript code using the 2011 & Web API REST endpoints.
  27. CRM Visual Studio Code JS Snippets – JavaScript code snippets for Dynamics 365/CRM 2011 – 2016 (5.0 – 8.2)
  28. TableTools2 – Add on for only Mozilla firefox to improve the CRM Grids. You can use the addon in grids that don’t display a filter or just in general with any page that displays a table like structure.
  29. CRM Theme Generator – Use this tool to generate the feature and create themes in CRM, supporting latest versions
  30. Advanced Query outer Join – Plugin to enable outer join queries from Advanced Find. This plugin enabled you to do that. The plugin runs on pre-RetrieveMultiple and alter the query that gets sent to the pipeline, with the correct outer join conditions
  31. Easy VS Code in Action – Use this to work with JavaScript file types from your desktop itself and without opening visual studio
  32. Custom code validation tool – Between CRM 2015 and CRM 2016 there are no differences for the checking of unsupported customizations of Js code, so if you get results to fix with the 2015 custom code validation tool means that you need to fix as well for 2016
  33. CRM DevTools – from Sonoma Partners is a Chrome extension which quickly provides CRM record and environment information and makes troubleshooting and testing so much easier. Once it’s installed, you can access the features by going to the Chrome DevTools (F12 key) and clicking the CRM DevTools tab.
  34. Solution to Create “Does Not Have” Queries using Advanced Find – This solution allows you to create “does not have” or “does not exist” queries using the standard Advanced Find interface.
  35. Dynamics 365 developer extensions(tool kit) – Tool to search for CRM related MSDN content, and tooling to assist with managing and deploying web resources, plug-ins, and reports
  36. Network Visualisation tool – Visualize the relationships between accounts, contacts and activities in a network graph, refer to this video to get insights
  37. Level up for dynamics CRM – Works with Edge and Chrome only. Gives form helpers and Navigation helpers, an amazing tool
  38. Personal view to System view – use this to convert created personal view to system view
  39. Beautify your JS, JSON code – improve the readability of your JS code, even minify your code
  40. Ribbon workbench 2016 – Most user friendly and universally accepted tool to customize ribbon, note that this version don’t need Silverlight within your browser
  41. ilspy – Used to decompile your source code from your .NET DLL, helpful to find your source code from plugin DLL’s
  42. Autonumbering solution – free autonumbering solution used to generate a Unique Reference Number for new records so they can easily be tracked, and is also useful for integrations.
  43. ReSharper – on the fly code analysis, identifies problems and provides quick fixes, best addin to visual studio
  44. Integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Find the ETL tools and other key useful integration tools supported from MSDN.
  45. Call workflows and actions using Javascript – Use this tool to call workflows and actions using JavaScript without much hassles without too much taking care of code.
  46. Scribe Insights – Good data migration platform to move data between two systems and create new records in MS CRM. Reasonably the best in terms of performance with such a kind of UI and easy to learn. Comes with one month free trial.
  48. SOAP UI – Most widely used tool for testing web services and other API’s without much hassles.
  49. DLL Extractor – Extract your plugin DLL’s located on your CRM Database, this applies only for On premise applications. Login to your Client network and specify the server and database name with Integrated security or SQL Authentication. Click on List Plugins which shows the assemblies registered and download the                    required ones.
  50. Portal Checker – Troubleshoot your Dynamics 365 portals
  51. Autonumber No Code solution – Autonumbering generation solution.
  52. Commander – is a pre-configured software package that provides you with an awesome terminal emulator, and best shell you’ll ever have on Windows
  53. GuidGen – GuidGen is Microsoft recommended tool which programmatically generates GUID’s.

Hope you found some tool which had increased your productivity developing CRM…

Cheers,

PMDY

Restricting infinite loops in MS CRM plugins

IExecutionContext.Depth Property:

Today would like to share with all of Dynamics CRM folks about the important Depth property used to prevent plugins going into infinite loop.

This is property name which tracks the Depth property of plugins in ms crm.

Gets the current depth of execution in the call stack and available in the context which is being passed to plugin.

Syntax:

int Depth { get; }

Notes:
This property is basically used by the platform for infinite loop prevention. very time a running plug-in 
or when workflow issues a message request to the web services that triggers 
another plugin or workflow to execute, the Depth property of the execution 
context is increased. If the depth property increments to its maximum value
within the configured time limit, the platform considers this behavior an 
infinite loop and further plug-in or Workflow execution is aborted.The max-
imum depth (8) and permissible time limit (one hour) are configurable by the Microsoft 
Dynamics CRM administrator by default.

If required, this setting can be changed by a powershell command
PowerShell command -- Set-CrmSetting. 

Depth is the number of times a plugin/custom workflow has been called in 
one transaction. Depth is often used to stop infinite loops where a plugin 
updates a value which triggers the plugin to run again. When a plugin/custom 
workflow triggers another plugin/trigger then the depth property is increm-
ented by one.The depth value has a maximum value called 
WorkflowSettings.MaxDepth. 
The CRM SDK (Depth)states this is set to maximum depth of 8 within one hour
and common method to avoid a recurring plugin is to check if  a plugins 
depth > 1.
This would stop the plugins from being run if was triggered from any other
plugin. The plugin would only run if triggered from the CRM form only.


Alternate solution is to use shared variables which can pass data between plugins
registered in different stages in a transaction. Eg.You can use ShareVariables 
to pass information between plugins registered on different stages but in the 
same transaction e.g a pre plugin can pass information to a post plugin.


Details can be observed better @ use shared variables in plugins

Update: 11/26/2018

Scenario:

Think of situation where the Plugin is registered on Update of an Entity with filtering attributes set to a field in the Entity.

Due to some bad coding logic, the Plugin registered is also updating the same field.

This would call the same plugin once more causing infinite loop.

This is where using Depth becomes significant.

Thank you.

Cheers,

PMDY