Table of Contents

This list is a reference point to projects, documents, tools, add-ins, and instructions for improving CRM and CRM Development.

Reading Material

Extensibility Feature Deployment Comparison
  An article by Microsoft that diagrams and compares various extension vectors for CRM

Extensibility, Enhancement, and Integration

Accelerators Microsoft's offering of several utilities to dramatically enhance CRM
Filtered Lookup A Plug-In from Agile Business Solutions to implement filtered or dependent Lookup fields on forms that do not impede search capability, or involve hacking CRM files
Hide System Views David Jennaway's Plug-In utility to conceal CRM's "out of the box" views, which cannot be removed
Date Only DateTime Plugin Mitchell Humphrey's helpful utility to straighten out the appearance of Date Only values across different timezones
Workflow Manipulation Library Carlton Colter's set of custom Workflow Activities that offer a bevy of various utilities for string manipulation, math calculation, date math, and advanced RegEx transformation
Share Record Workflow Activity Alberto Gemin's custom Workflow Activity that automates sharing of records
Distribute Workflow Activity Alberto Gemin's custom Workflow Activity to instantiate Workflows across a 1:N or N:N relationship
DateTime Formatting for Workflows Andriy Butenko's custom Workflow Activity code to allow for custom formatting of DateTime values for inclusion with other Workflow actions
Javascript Grid Editor David Berry's project to provide in-grid record creation and editing.
Web Service Toolkit for Javascript Daniel Cai's library of Web Service methods in easy-to-use JS methods and objects
List Web Part Microsoft's SharePoint add-in to display CRM views; supports web part data connections
Field Level Security Whitepaper Microsoft's in-depth analysis of the mechanisms in CRM that can be extended or considered in order to provide security at the attribute-level of entities or records in CRM
Harnessing the Power of the Dynamics CRM 4.0 API from Silverlight 4 Building Silverlight applications that can interact directly with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Troubleshooting and Debugging

Enable tracing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Microsoft's KB article on enabling the trace logs for CRM (tracing impacts performance significantly, so do this only when necessary, and disable it when not needed)
Trace Log Viewer Stunnware's utility to quickly analyze and identify errors and warnings within trace log files
Event Listener Patrick Verbeeten's global CRM event cataloger will help you analyze data passed into and returned by SOAP method calls in a traceable fashion; excellent for debugging
Access Checker Tanguy Touzard's utility to enumerate access rights of a user to a record; helpful for troubleshooting "SecLib:: AccessCheckEx failed." messages
XML Validator Tanguy Touzard's general purpose XML validation utility helpfully identifies issues with customization XML files
Plugin Message Spy  CodePlex project by Gayan Perera. Allows spying on plugin messages as they are triggered in Microsoft CRM.

Development Helpers

Developer Toolkit Microsoft's VS add-in to improve the efficiency of developing CRM Plug-In and Workflow assemblies
[Enhanced] Plugin Registration Tool Provides many features above and beyond the PRT distributed by the CRM SDK
MSCRM 4 Toolbox A collection of various features and utilities from within this list by Treasure Baloyi
Configuration Manager Daniel Halan's complete CRM customization management utility includes JavaScript management, Workflow publishing, attribute datatype changes, attribute deletion reconciliation, and supports console-scripted operations
Stunnware Tools Community Edition offers a Metadata Viewer, FetchXML Wizard, and Excel export capability for speedy development reference
CRM 4 Developer's Tool Patrick Verbeeten's rich Metadata explorer also shows the API messages each entity supports
JavaScript Form Manager Tanguy Touzard's utility to easily manage all JavaScript customizations, offering export and import capability, and a central management interface for all entities
Picklist XML Generator Mario Raunig's utility to convert Picklist label and value pairs to XML for customization files; useful for large Picklist data-sets
Export CRM 4.0 Plugins New!
  Mitch Milam's utility for extracting database-stored Plug-in assemblies from any deployment.
CRM Demonstration Tools The tool which includes a utility to create Depended Picklist Script

Deployment Helpers

Internet Facing Deployment Tool Easily configure CRM to provide Forms-Based Authentication (FBA), instead of Kerberos (Windows Integrated) to networks not identified as "internal"
Data Migration Manager Microsoft's tool for migrating data in bulk between platforms; also useful for more complicated data import purposes

Maintenance and Performance

Administration Console Alberto Gemin's utility for managing Users, Roles, Views, and Local Data Groups (CRM for Outlook in Offline mode) in bulk
Scale Group Job Editor Adjust the scheduling and execution of CRM's internal maintenance tasks
Bulk Update and Export Tool Orbit One's utility to apply updates to CRM records in bulk within the application, or export to Excel (or another app) and import updates made therein
Bulk Delete Launcher Tanguy Touzard's utility to configure Bulk Delete jobs based on the results of Advanced Find views; can be used to schedule recurring jobs to clean CRM databases
Monitoring CRM with SCOM 2007 An article from extremecrm.net on how to use System Center Operations Manager 2007 to monitor a CRM deployment's performance and gathering helpful information on areas to improve
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Performance Toolkit
 The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Performance Toolkit was created by the Microsoft CRM product team to formalize performance testing of Microsoft CRM 4.0. The performance toolkit can be used by the Microsoft CRM partners and customers to collect data to support their CRM deployment decisions.

ISV Helpers

CRM Demonstration Tools Provides the ability to populate CRM with sample data-sets for demonstration purposes
Comparing Customizations Compare customization XML files from different CRM deployments to identify the differences, or export records for a custom entity that represents a "configuration", and import them into a different deployment that implements the same entities.
ISV.Config and SiteMap Editor Patrick Verbeeten's utility to modify CRM's internal configuration files with a handy XML editor that manages their export and import seamlessly
ISV.Config Manager Tanguy Touzard's easy to use ISV.Config manipulator requires no XML editing and also manages its export and import seamlessly
View Layout Replicator Tanguy Touzard's utility for easily replicating column layouts across many views
Searchable Property Attribute Updater Tanguy Touzard's utility to easily manage the "Searchable" property of attributes throughout CRM in bulk

Documentation Generation

Documentation Generator Scott Sewell's utility forks Merijn van Mourik's CRM 3 utility of the same name, and compiles CRM entity and attribute metadata into an Excel spreadsheet for reference purposes
Visio ER Diagram Generator Thuta Hliang's utility for generating a Visio diagram of CRM entity relationships and attribute metadata