Guest blogger and CRM MVP Donna Edwards regales us with insight into a free tool she picked up on Codeplex.
I was working on customizing a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online system today. Part of the change was to adjust the various Views of several entities so I thought I would try out the View Replicator that was developed by one of our favorite CRM MVP’s, Tanguy, and is available on Codeplex.
Here’s a quick walkthrough of the tool. I’m using the Account entity as my example.
First, I updated the Account entity’s view, “My Active Accounts”, to meet the design requirements and saved my changes.
Next, I opened the View Replicator and connected to the CRM Online Organization. In order to connect to a CRM Organization, you need to complete a couple of fields in the Connection wizard:
First, give your connection a name and then, for CRM Online, select the Custom Authentication option and select the CRM Online checkbox. Enter the login live id that you use to access CRM Online, enter your password and enter crm.dynamics.com for the Server Name if your Online Organization is hosted in North America. You will see the other Server Name options available when you select the Server Name field.
Next select the Get Orgs button and select the Organization from the list returned.
At this point you will receive a prompt that asks you if you want to connect, select Yes and you should receive a message stating Connection Successful.
You are now ready to Load the Entity you want to customize. You do this by selecting the Load Entity button.
and select the entity that you want to customize. In this example, I want to replicate the My Active Accounts View so I selected Account as the Entity and My Active Accounts from the Source View option.
As you can see, the view displayed is exactly as I customized it. You also get a nice view of the xml as well. Now to replicate. In order to replicate the My Active Accounts view to the other Account views, all I need to do is select the Views from the Target View list.
I selected all of the Views to meet the design requirements then selected Save Views and Publish from the top menu. I then checked the CRM Online Organization to confirm that the changes were made.
How wonderful is that and what a time saver! I just updated more than 10 views in a matter of minutes. Not only is it a time saver, but refreshing as well because if you are like me, updating views one-by-one is tedious.
So give it a try, and while you’re at it, check out some of Tanguy’s other tools. I’m sure you’ll like them.
- SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
- Ribbon Browser for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
- JavaScript Web Resource Manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
- Searchable Property Updater for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
Cheers,
CRM MVP Donna Edwards