XrmToolBox

The XrmToolBox is a Windows application that connects to the Dataverse and Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement CE. It empowers everyone working with the Power Platform and there are 100+ tools which can be used. It was originally created by Tanguy Touzard but today everyone can contribute both to the Windows application as well as with building tools.

How to get started

You download XrmToolBox from here and install it on your computer. When you run it for the first time you will need to connect to a Power Platform environment (which has a database). Connection are saved so next time you open XrmToolBox you’ll have your connection in place and just need to connect to it.

Good to know

You find documentation here.

There is a podcast dedicated to XrmToolBox, it is called XrmToolCast and is hosted by Jonas Rapp and Daryl LaBar. They invite the community and talk about XrmToolBox tools. Go and listen!

The tools

The different 🛠 are found under Plugin store. You find a complete list of tool here.

Here follows examples of very handy tools:

Tools for Makers

• Attribute Manager Here is a tool for the person who needs to “do it again and do it right”. Imagine that you have created a field for an entity in a solution, you use that field on forms, in views, in workflows, business rules and you might even have some data for this field. Then you realize – you really should have used another data type for this field. Well, do it again and do it right. That means, remove the field from all places you have added it to, create a new field and add that field to those places and there might be data to transfer from the old field to the new field. OR - use this tool and take away the painfully manual work. For DEV environments, since you cannot use it for managed solutions – and who uses unmanaged solutions in other environments than development environments?! ;-)
• BPF Manager This tool allows you to set an active business process flow stage for records in bulk. Use this after a data import, or simply to switch stages from an old BPF into a new one.
• Easy Translator Export all translations for a table/tables, update in Excel, import, tada!
• Ribbon Workbench Edit XML files manually or use the Ribbon Workbench. "Standard" for editing the Dynamics CRM Ribbon since Microsoft Dynamics CRM version 2011.
• Personal User Views Migration In model-driven apps users can create their own views. There are system views and there are personal views. There is no way to natively migrate personal views nor delete a personal view. With this tool you can accomplish both of those tasks.
• View Layout Replicator Update the different views for a certain entity manually (filers and what columns to include) or use this tool to replicate from one view to other views.
• User Settings Utility Instruct each user how to do certain updates or use this tool and manage users personal settings in bulk.
• Bulk Workflow Execution In the UI, workflows can be run for only as many records that you can have in a view, i.e. 250 records at a time. Click through the views and execute workflows or use this tool to execute Workflows in bulk using CRM Views or FetchXML Queries.

Tools for Makers and Devs

• FetchXmlBuilder Create queries and code manually or use FetchXmlBuilder to create queries for Microsoft Dataverse.

Tools for Devs

• Plugin Registration Use the SDK version of Plugin Registration. Or use this tool and you can logon in the same way you do when using other tools.
• Plugin Trace Viewer Look at the Plug-in Trace Log under legacy settings or use this tool to investigate the Plug-in Trace Log with easy filtering and display possibilities.