Wednesday, March 17, 2010

CRM 4 Import Export Customisations cool tool

I've lost day working out why my CRM customisations have been corrupted because a custom attribute has changed datatype. I've spent hours working out what the exact customisation need to be exported to bring UAT in line with Dev. I've gone cross eyed deleting attributes that are no longer used.  

But no more this tool solves these problems and more, totally awesome, look at at it's features:



  • Console Application, Making it possible to import and export inside nant, msbuild or bat scripts, for example to export the customization each night and “check in” to a source code repository, enabling version control of the customizations. Also to import customizations directly from a MSI installation.
  • Export Only Modifications, You can export a “clean” customization xml in the beginning of a project and save it in the application folder as “CleanCustomization.xml”, the application will compare the current state and only export the entities that are modified or added.
  • Remove Deleted Attributes, This feature only applies when importing a customization. When this operation is selected one will be prompted with all attributes that has been removed in the new customization, given the possibility to remove them from the CRM instance.
  • Changes Attribute data type, When changing an attributes data type and then trying to import it to a CRM instance that still contains the old attribute would normally generate an error. This is now handled and the data inside the old attribute will be converted to the new data type (when possible and logical)
  • Publish, You can publish the customizations, can also be used at it’s own, for example assigning it to a system wide hotkey for fast access.
  • Node & Entity Selection, you can select what nodes and entities to import and export. For example only export ISV Config or the Site Map. Possible items to select, 


EntitiesWorkflowsRolesISV Config
SitemapTemplatesCalendar SettingsGeneral Settings
Email SettingsMarketing SettingsOutlook SynchronizationAutoNumbering Settings
And more…





  • JavaScript Export/Import, This allows you to extract JavaScript to a local folder, where you can work in a proper script editor, and later import them back. You can also create new javascripts in the same folder, just follow the name convention and they will also be imported to the correct entity / event.
  • Zip support, Now all features works with zipped customizations
  • Include Related Entities, This features will automatically include related entities to the selected entities, so their relationships are exported and can be reviewed for conflicts. This is recommended during the development process when relationships may change.
  • Publish Workflows, Publish operation now also publishes workflows

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