CRM 2013 Tool – CRM Early Bound Generator

Tanguy CRM MVP creator of the excellent XrmToolbox has let the framework of the XrmToolbox the tool CRM Early Bound Generator and this is very kind and extremely useful.

here is the video review, which runs through using the file in your plugin code in visual studio.

Lets start with the basics, the tool is free and you can find the tool on codeplex

https://xrmearlyboundgenerator.codeplex.com/

The CRM Early Bound generator is basically a way to make it easier to create Early bound entities and it does this by creating an application wrapped around the CrmSvcUtil.exe.

To find out more about the CrmSvcUtil.exe click the link below

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg327844.aspx

I have blogged about using the crmsvcutil in a couple of blogs

CRM 2011 – How to add crmsvcutil to the External tools menu in Visual Studio

CRM 2011 – Simple CrmSvcUtil example for creating early bound classes

So it was with some interest I cracked open this tool and the first thing you notice is the initial container is the XrmToolBox

You then have to add a connection and then you will get this page.  If you have already setup the XrmToolbox you can copy the mscrmtools2011 and it will bring the connections you have already made to this tool.

Now although you can do this Early bound generator stuff with the CRM Developer toolkit he hulk2484 (excellent name), here is a picture of him

here is a picture of the tool main page

So from here you can now see you have quite a lot of options to create the early bound class.  I would mention that the codeplex page has a detailed description of all the options and this tool is one of the best documentation tools I have seen, so well done with that aspect of the tool (especially consider developers had documenting things)

I noticed that clicking

Create One File Per Entity

Generates an error

Entity Path must be a directory

I guess this is a bug or maybe something I’m not changing but I’m not sure you would go for all this effort to split the files into separate files

The things I liked about the tool was this option

Entities To Skip

This will allow you to select entities to not generate CRM early bound files for, this is very useful in keeping the size of the file down and the time it takes to generate (which although small, you will have to do this lots of times).  Also it remembers which records you have chosen to exlude.

Another good feature is it can create enum mappings for optionsets which makes it easier and safer to use these.

The tool is very good and easy to use. good job.