CRM 2016 – XRMToolbox plugin store error – Unable to load one or more of the requested types

The XRMToolbox is awesome and now it has an auto updater, boom, saves me the bother of having to download and update etc.

I ran the auto updater and got this error when running the plugin store

Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information

I shut the plugin store and used the main XRMToolbox but I noticed some of the tools were missing such as

• FetchXML Builder
• View Designer
• Export to Excel

To resolve this problem, I shut down the XRMToolbox and restarted it, the plugin store worked fine and all the plugins/tools were there

 

CRM 2016 – XRMToolBox – loadFromRemoteSources error

Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

George Herbert

 

The latest XRMToolBox  is fantastic, its awesome  you can download the external plugins from the plugin store by clicking on the plugin store button.

If you are not using the XRMToolbox then download it here and go to the plugin store and you will find something useful which will save you hours of manual work.

loadFromRemoteSources error

I opened up the XRMToolbox and got the error below when I tried to use the plugin store

This error is caused by an assembly (dll) being loaded from a remote source and be granted full trust

You can find information about the error on the page below

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd409252(v=vs.110).aspx

This stackoverflow page helped me understand the issue

In the xrmtoolbox config file you can have the element – loadFromRemoteSources and this can have a true or false value.  To make the PluginStore work we need to set the trust to true.

In the folder you should find a file called

XrmToolBox.exe.config

Below is the code I put at the bottom above the configuration

<runtime>
<loadFromRemoteSources enabled = “true” />
</runtime>

Here is a picture, to show you where I put the lines

Save the XrmToolBox.exe.config and open the XRMToolbox again and now the plugin store should work.

 

 

CRM developers tools of the trade – ReSharper

Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

George Herbert

CRM Tools

Tools play an important part of the CRM developers life, they can save you hours of time and speed up development.  One of the best examples of a tool saving you time and effort is CRM MVP’s Scott Durow’s Ribbon workbench.  The manual process of editing the Ribbon in CRM is incredible tedious, the Ribbon workbench offers a GUI way to do it and it’s free.

Tools allow you to code on the shoulders of great CRM developers

You should checkout Tanguy’s XrmToolBox

I have reviewed a number of tools on this blogpost – Hosk’s CRM 2013 Tools List

Tools

CRM tools are very useful but there are some generic tools which are useful to CRM developers and one I would highly recommend is ReSharper by JetBrains.

ReSharper is a Visual Studio extension for .Net developers.  I have heard a few developers talk about ReSharper, so I thought I would have a look myself.  What you usually find is anyone who has used ReSharper will tell you how good it is.

The downside is this tool isn’t free but it doesn’t cost that much, find the price for personal use here

It is free for various people/groups which you might be part of

Additional options
* For startups (50 percent off)
* For students and teachers
* For education and training
* For Open Source projects
* For .NET user groups
* For Microsoft MVPs

For a personal license it’s 99 pounds.   Which if you use this a few times a week isn’t that much and the benefits to your coding and time spent finding bugs, formatting and other tasks could easily be worth it.  They also have a pay monthly option

ReSharper has a try before you buy scheme

The good news is you can try ReSharper free for the 30 days, so download it and give it a go.

I have tried it and I love it, to get the full benefits you will need to be writing CRM plugins and/or .NET code.

These blog posts highlight the benefits of ReSharper

• Code Navigation: ReSharper 8 vs. Visual Studio 2013
• How Resharper rocks my average work day.
• Lots and lots of features

Lots of features

ReSharper has lots of functionality, one of the difficulties I had was to learn what features were available, what they did and when I should use them.

These blogs were useful in learning about the ReSharper functionality

• 31 days of resharper
• 15 resharper keyboard shortcuts
• resharper cookbook

Warnings not nagging

I appreciate the way ReSharper works because it uses warnings.  These are often best practices but not serious.

It pops a warning mark on the right of the code and if you click on it you will get to a light-bulb.

Often I take these as suggestions, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. The way ReSharper warns you I have found not to be annoying or nagging.

Keeps me thinking

One of the positives of Resharper is keeps offering me code assistance and constantly keeps me thinking about the quality of code I’m writing.

• It has offered to change a query expression to a linq query
• swap If Else statements to a switch
• Catching the nulls
• One great features of Resharper is it warns you if a variable may contain null and offers to add an if statement to catch it.

Correct Naming standards

ReSharper is good for nudging you in the direction of better coding and will warn you to rename fields and functions

• Lightbulbs – quick fixes
• closing brackets and quotes automatically
• Code Generation
• Alt – INS

RED Errors whilst you type

“Big deal,” you may say. “Visual Studio already has squiggles like that.” True. But Visual Studio only shows the squiggles after you compile. ReSharper points out compiler errors in real-time, as you type. It does its magic completely in the background.

Grey is dead code

If you see grey code, it means you don’t need this code because it’s not being used.  Sometimes this is annoying because you are about to use it.  It’s good for getting rid namespaces you don’t need (ReSharper will get rid of them for you)

One feature I really like is when ReSharper puts up an error, there is an option to click which says

Why is ReSharper suggesting this and it will explain the coding practice to you

Auto Closing Delimiter

ReSharper automatically closes brackets

Not used warning

ReSharper has great features and one of them is to warn when variables are not used

I had an example where I was assigning a value and then overwriting it.  Resharper warned me that variable value wasn’t being used in any code branch

warnings I found annoying

VAR

One warning which annoyed me was Resharper trying to change all varibables to var to improve readability.  Personally I like developers to use the correct variable type and using var is a bit lazy.

it kept trying to persuade me to remove this but FXcop kept advising me to put this in.  Only one way to resolve this

FIGHHHTTT

The good news is it’s easy to turn off the warnings.  You can turn off the warnings in a method or class or project.

Or you can turn the inspect severity and then search for the error you want to remove.

Learn to use your tools effectively

Tools can make speed up development process and make development processes easier. Choosing the right tools is one part of the solution.  The rationale behind this is you probably use your development tools on a daily basis, if you can find functionality which speeds up, automatics tasks you do every day, lots of times a day you will make a considerable time saving.

This sums up my thoughts on resharper, it eases and speeds up my development

information for learning ReSharper

There is a series of screencasts on the Dime Casts website which are quite good as an introduction.There is also the 31 days of Resharper and the official demos give you an idea of what’s possible so you know to dive into the menu.

This article show you how ReSharper’s code creation

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

The time I really notice the work ReSharper does is when I am helping with someone and they don’t have ReSharper.

ReSharper helps refactoring, this article describes why – Why use ReSharper manage refactor code

Overall

ReSharper makes working easier and smoother with lots of great enhancements.

Warning me about unusual variables, methods and usings is useful.

Warnings about code which could be done better is useful

It’s difficult to describe what exactly ReSharper does but it does things better than Visual Studios’s out the box functionality and will make your life easier.  If you use Visual Studio on a daily basis all the small benefits will add up to large benefits.

If you try ReSharper you will see why it’s great and will be tempted to buy it

CRM 2013 Tool Review – Solution History for CRM 2013

This blog post is about history, so I shall with this quote

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

 

Guido tweeted a link to this tool and the title interested me

Solution History for CRM 2013 click the link below to download it

https://solutionhistory.codeplex.com/

What does it do

The tool shows a historical view of all the solutions and their components which have been imported into a CRM organization

How does it work

It’s an add in into the excellent XRMToolBox written by Tanguy and others.  You get the latest version of the XRMToolbox and drop in the dll.  This will then load up a new tab in the toolbox.

You may not know but when ever you import a solution into CRM it creates a importJob record

I have written a blog post on follow the progress of a solution import by doing a query on the importjob table.

CRM 2011/2013 – Progress of solution import

 

The CRM Solution History tool doesn’t show the progress of a job importing, I just thought I would add that as a bonus topic on the subject of importJob.  The CRM Solution Hisotory tool displays the contents of importjob table and split the data up into nice GUI format, which shows you when solutions were important, the components inside the solutions and who imported them.

below is the screen shot from codeplex

Why is it useful

In most/all CRM projects you will have a DEV, TEST, PROD environments as a minimum, I have  worked on projects where we use to have 3 DEV environments, 2 Test environments, PREPROD and PROD.

The challenge when you have lots of environments is keeping track of what

Who and when imported solutions

The tool shows you who and when a solution was important. This can be useful to allow you to work out if certain changes were included in the solution and if one solution has overwritten another solution.

When working on CRM projects with multiple developers, it’s important to be able to see what developers have been importing solutions

What files were included in the solutions

The tools show what type of components were included in a solution and what individual files.

Unmanaged solutions

Unmanaged solutions can be used to sneak across some changes between Dev and Test were forgetten.  This can either happen in a temporary unmanaged solution which is subsequently deleted or it can be the same umanaged solution but the number is incremented.

It also shows unmanaged solutions, which can often be used to sneak things across you forgot or for quick fixes.

Fragmented CRM environments

Different systems can get fragmented and it can be hard to know what components have been imported, who imported them and when they were imported (overwriting each other)

Solution hiding

Sometimes the same solution can be imported multiple times without the version number being bumped up.  This can make it difficult to keep track of different environments (this usually happens internally between Dev and Test).  This tool will allow you to see the date of the last import and give you an understanding what was included in the solution and if certain changes were brought across.

Potential Uses of the Tool

Production Deployment

It’s always a nervous time when you press the “Import” button and kick off a solution import on a production server and the last thing you want to do is have to do things wrong and have to import an older solution.

This tool would give you a method to check what has been deployed before and compare it with other servers.

DEV and TEST SYNC

In development environments with multiple developers working, it can be hard to keep track of what has been imported, particularly between the DEV environment Test environment.

In DEV you can also see that sometimes things get forgotten and get brought across as an unmanaged solution or another mini solution.

This tool would help keeping track of what has been brought across and if your latest code has made it across.

It would also help you to see what components you need to include in the managed solution to production and avoid missing out a key component.

Does it work with CRM 2011

The importJob table hasn’t changed (to my knowledge) from CRM 2011 to CRM 2013 so luckily the tool works fine with CRM 2011 (well it worked with my CRM org).

So the good news is YES it does work with CRM 2011 and it will should work with CRM 2015 I’m guessing.

More Tools

If you want more CRM tools why not check out my list

https://crmbusiness.wordpress.com/hosks-microsoft-dynamic-crm-development/crm-2013-tools/

CRM 2013 Tool Review – Dynamics CRM Organisation Settings Editor

I was getting a timeout error when importing a solution (actually a whole bunch of errors but I won’t go into that now) and I searched the internet for the answer and came right back to my own blog, thanks Marvelous Hosk for writing that blog post

CRM 2011 – A time-out occurs when you import a solution in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

The blog and KB article link said I should update the OLEDBTimeout value.  It jogged my memory to try out the The Dynamics CRM Organisation Settings Editor or OrgDBOrgSettings as it is known.

The tool was created by seanmcne who is a CRM Premier Field Engineer on the Dynamics PFE Team (I refer to as the A Team) and he has been working with CRM since 2004 and Microsoft CRM 1.0!!

The first thing I will add this tool has some great simple documentation.

What does it do

I will quote from the codeplex site for the project https://orgdborgsettings.codeplex.com/

This is a utility allowing admins of Dynamics CRM (2011/2013 – online & onPrem) to edit their organization database settings otherwise known as OrgDBOrgSettings

This utility allows you to edit your settings without the use of the command line utility in the KB article documenting “OrgDBOrgSettings.” The utility is written using the CRM SDK as a reference and currently all changes and retrieval of settings are done via the CRM’s OData Endpoint. The utility is provided as a managed webresource that can easily be installed and uninstalled from your CRM environment.

How is it setup

The project is a managed solution and only adds a few files.  You may add it, change the values and remove it

How do I use it

once you have imported the solution, go to solutions, click on the solution

Organization Settings Editor

Then here  click on configuration and this is where you can use the solution to change the DBOrg settings

Below is the screen you will see

What version of CRM

It will work with CRM 2011 and CRM 2013 and I should think it will continue to work with CRM 2015

Why is good

The reason why it is good because it means you can Add/Edit OrgDBOrgSettings without using a command line tool.

A really great piece of functionality is it links to the KBArticle, so you can understand what the change will do and why you might need to do it.

I also think it’s good it doesn’t have its own site map button because it means it just hides itself away.

Finally

For those of your sharp-eyed folk you will of course notice the OLEDBTimeout setting isn’t in the database – OrgDBOrgSettings it’s actually in registry of the CRM Server.

My article didn’t help because the timeout was already set to a large number and the web config httpRuntime maxRequestLength had been increased, so it’s back to the drawing board for this error

More CRM 2013 Tool Reviews

https://crmbusiness.wordpress.com/hosks-microsoft-dynamic-crm-development/crm-2013-tools/

CRM 2013 Tool – CRM 2013 One Click Navigation

Gather round children Uncle Ben is going to tell you a story.

Once upon a time Microsoft updated it’s CRM version from CRM 2011 to CRM 2013 and during this process removed the popular left hand navigation and replaced it with a better looking but much harder to use new navigation.  Highlights of the new navigation

Top menu disappearing just as  you try to go to it (this has been fixed a bit in the latest rollup because it stays there longer)

impossible to find Advanced find button

a smaller command bar with only room for 5 items (bumped up to 7 in the latest release)

 

To speed this story up,  Rockton Software commissioned a contest to see who could create the best solution to help the CRM 2013 navigation.   CRM MVP’s from all the land flocked round to battle it in a winner takes all ($5000 reward).  You can see the final five here and the winner, CRM MVP Damian Sinay

The problem was the winning solution wasn’t a solution so not everyone could deploy it

 

roll on one week and Damian Sinay creator of the winning solution has converted it a free solution on codeplex and the CRM 2013 One Click Navigation was born.

The solution is a manged solution and can be downloaded by the link below

https://crm2013oneclicknavigation.codeplex.com/

Now import that solution

When you refresh your CRM you will now see a tidy small navigation bar.  You may be thinking it looks a bit small but when you move you mouse over it, it is really responsive and quick.  I have borrowed the images from the codeplex page because if I did them again they wouldn’t actually be any different.

When you hover over one of nav items the entities drop down quickly, it’s hard to explain but it’s very enjoyable to use because it’s so responsive.  Basically what this solution does is put the good old CRM 2011 achored left hand menu at the top.  It’s a fantastic solution because it offers the same functionality but takes up less room.

In fact I would almost say this is better than the left hand menu because you don’t need it there all the time taking up that space but you want to be able to access those entities/menu choices so you can quickly navigate around CRM 2013.

 

In the codeplex solution also has this line

I want to thanks Rhett Clinton, Ramon Tebar and mtcantero for the CRM 2013 Quick View Menu project from where I took some of the codes to build the final solution.

Download this and try it, you will love it.

The only improvement I can really think of is if there were another column which had advanced find button on but you can import the advanced find solution so it doesn’t really matter.

great work Damian Sinay, this should definitely win you another years MVP award, you certainly get my vote.

Video review

CRM 2013 Tool – Hosk’s CRM 2013 Guid Getter

Inspired by the Advanced Find on record forms for CRM 2013 tool on codeplex, I thought I would also add a tool of my own which would get the guid of a record.

Getting the guid of a record is one of the boring manual jobs I have to do when testing my plugin code and there are many ways to do this

Quick way to get a guid in CRM 2013

video of getting guid

but I wanted an easier way and I was also interested in creating a project on codeplex to see how that process worked.

So here is the project

https://hoskscrm2013guidgetter.codeplex.com/

 

Basically the tool doesn’t do much apart from show the guid in the form notification area of the record.  To use it you install the managed solution

 

Then you will see the option on all default and custom records.  To find the button click the 3 dots

 

Then when you have clicked the button the guid shall magically appear

 

The hardest part of the whole process was getting GIT to work so I could upload the source files.

So I can proudly say I have created a tool, now all I have to do is create a tool which does something more useful.

 

 

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.

CRM 2013 Tool – Advanced Find on record forms for CRM 2013

One of the most frustrating changes to the new UI in CRM 2013 is the disappearance of the Advanced Find button from the majority of menus.

For those of you who like to watch and hear the Hosk

for the rest of you, read on my friends

For some reason I struggle to find the advanced button and I’m not sure what level I have to go up to to get it.   This seems an unusual thing to do because Advanced Find is one of the most useful and import tools to users.

Luckily for us someone has helped to ease the pain of CRM 2013 users by creating a solution to simply add an advanced find onto every record

This person is CRM MVP Damian Sinay and you can follow him on twitter if you want

https://twitter.com/damiansinay

There isn’t much to the tool, except it puts a nice juicy advanced find on every

Here you can see a screen shot of the Advanced Find button.  You might at first think the solution hasn’t worked because you can’t see the Advanced Find button but it it’s hidden in the 3 dots (more buttons).

The really good thing about the solution is you will now see an advanced find on all entities, even the custom entities.  Here is a screen shot of a custom entity and there is the advanced find.

I had a look at the solution files and there really isn’t much in there.  The only real change is in the customization file and you can see the changes below.  I’m not quite sure how it works and how you can add a button to all entities but it works so it is good stuff.

 

 

 

 

CRM 2013 tool – Plugin and Workflow Synchronous events execution order editor

When Tanguy the CRM Tool guy creates a new tool, it’s time to down load the new XRMToolBox and see what new toys he has created for us to play with.  You can read about it on his latest blog post .

I like the way someone mentions they would like to do something and POW the next moment Tanguy has created a tool to do just that, he lives to give.

In this blog post I am letting people know Tanguy has a new tool out and giving it a test drive so you can see what it does, so you can see if you want to use it.  I have also done a video review which you can see here

Hosk CRM Dev review CRM 2013 tool – Plugin and Workflow Synchronous events execution order editor

This tool is really only of interest to developers, although it does have some use as informational tool to other users but it’s primary use is to allow the CRM developer to see and easily change the order of synchronous plugins and workflows.  The real bonus is it show the order of worflows next to Plugins, so you can see the whole picture of what is happening on the trigger of a CRM message/event for a particular entity.

This new Tool is interesting and useful for projects where you have a lot of plugins, particularly entities with lots of plugins being triggered on the same message.

To use it you fire up the XRMToolbox

add a connection.  If you are using a CRM 2013 trial select Use Office 365 because I found that when I tried to using the Use CRM Online I couldn’t connect

 

Once you have your connection done, you will then a see a list of all the great tools.  Today we are going to click on Synchronous events execution order editor.  Clicking this will open a new tab with the tool details. This is useful because it means you can open multiple tools at once

 

 

You then need to press the load events button, this will load the SDK Messages and then you can see what plugins are running the rank.

You can edit the rank (which is the order the plugins will run) and then press the apply update(s) button to save this.

Not only is the tool useful for changing the rank but it’s also an easy and quick way to view what plugins you have running.  When you look at your current system you will notice there are a lot of activity feed plugins running.

Good work Tanguy, keep up the good work.