Open LINQPad

Using LINQPad for Dynamics CRM Development

You are likely already familiar with the excellent development tool LINQPad and if you are a Dynamics CRM Developer you, hopefully, are familiar with LINQPad Plugin for Dynamics CRM. Using LINQPad along with the LINQPad CRM Plugin is a great way to learn the ins and outs of writing LINQ queries for Dynamics CRM.

In this article I will show you how, with just a minimal of effort, you can start using LINQPad to directly call Dynamics CRM. This will allow you to go beyond just building LINQ queries and execute code to test Request/Response messages, QueryExpression retrieval, FetchXml, and much more. Using LINQPad allows you to test and learn in real-time without waiting to compile your code and execute your test cases (if you even have test cases! You do have test cases, right?) (more…)

Dynamics CRM 2011: Prep Plug-in for XrmToolbox

Originally published at http://goo.gl/bkewP1

​I can’t really take a lot of credit for this post. All of the difficult work was done by a couple of Dynamics gurus.

XRM Prep Plug-in

This is a plugin for XrmToolBox (http://xrmtoolbox.codeplex.com/) by Tanguy Touzard. Great thanks to Tanguy for releasing XrmToolBox and providing really solid documentation on how to create Plug-ins for it. XrmToolBox and his numerous other very useful Dynamics CRM tools, which all now run in XrmToolBox, are a great value to the Dynamics CRM community.

The idea, implementation logic, and solution file that are the basis for this plug-in are the work of Marc Schweigert from Microsoft. (more…)

Dynamics CRM 2011: Finally…Enterprise ALM for Dynamics CRM 2011

Originally published at http://goo.gl/XXm6z5

​I wanted to bring your attention to two items that can be very useful for all of us working on Dynamics CRM.
As you are aware, CRM customization and development has never really worked well with enterprise focused application lifecycle management (ALM.) The export capability (even with Solutions in 2011) has never worked very well with source code control and change management. (more…)

Dynamics CRM 2011: Simplifying the Request Response Model

Originally published at http://goo.gl/C1n3Hw

If you have worked with the Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK you are probably very familiar with the Request/Response model messages in Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Messages. As a developer trying to write good code I always want to wrap any service call in a Try/Catch statement to provide proper error handling. Another goal is to keep the code as neat as possible for when I – or someone else – has to go back and read it. Wrapping calls in Try/Catch statements increases the total lines of code it takes to implement functionality and makes the code more difficult to read. (more…)