CRM 2013 Top Tools

There have been a few blog posts about CRM 2013 tools, so I thought I would cobble this information together in one fine blog post for you dedication.

First Tanguy (the CRM Tool Guy) is obviously starting to get fatigued writing lots of tools for CRM so has started coraling other developers to write tools and then snaffling them into his increasingly useful CRM 2011/2013 toolbox.  His recent blog post say’s DamSim – known as Damien to his mum has add a view transfer tool, he has created a nice superman/DamSim icon to go with it.

  • A new tool developed by my colleague Damien (DamSim) that will allow you to copy a view from one organization to an other. This is the View Transfer Tool.

image

You can get the toolbox at codeplex on the link below (but you knew that already)

http://xrmtoolbox.codeplex.com/

Tanguy also adds a teaser saying a developer from a well known Microsoft CRM partner is planning to join Tanguy’s toolbox revolution and add some more tools to the toolbox and if Tanguy is excited about this then we should all be exited.

One thing to note I was playing with the XRMToolbox with my CRM 2013 trial, I couldn’t connect to begin with when I had select Use CRM online checkbox but it did connect when I chose the Office 365 checkbox.

Tools recommended from The Dynamics Team in the field

The CRM in the field blog (Microsoft’s developer troubleshooters) released a blog saying what tools they use on the job.  You can read the blog post here but I have listed the ones I think are most useful below (they mention the SDK and code legacy checking tools)

Name URL
Xrm Toolbox Download
CRM 2013 Quick View Menu http://crm2013quickviewmenu.codeplex.com/
CRM 2013 Dupe Detection Download
Odata Query Designer Download
Trace Reader for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Download
Sparkle Xrm (CRM 2013 Start Menu navigation)

Download

I would also add the Scott Durow’s excellent Ribbon Workbench solution

http://www.develop1.net/public/page/Ribbon-Workbench-for-Dynamics-CRM-2011.aspx

brief Hosk Description of the tools

Xrm Toolbox 

Excellent, has loads of tools inside

CRM 2013 Dupe Detection

CRM 2013 has removed the duplicate detection because it is constantly saving, this solution can allow you to add that functionality back in.

CRM 2013 Quick View Menu

Fantastic windows 8 style navigation display.  It allows you to see all the entities, which is great if like me it takes you some time to navigate around in CRM 2013

Trace Reader for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

if you are having problems then you need to turn on some tracing and get into the log files

Ribbon Workbench solution

This is a fantastic tool that will save you hours/days/weeks/years if you have to do any editing of the Ribbon.