3 Top Free Tools Every Dynamics CRM Developer Must Know

Introduction

If you are new to Dynamics CRM Development, there are a lot of 3rd-party tools for Dynamics CRM, but these are probably the most used and free:

Visual Ribbon Editor
XrmServiceToolkit
Sitemap Editor

1) Visual Ribbon Editor

Visual Ribbon Editor is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application that allows you to easily add /edit/remove ribbon buttons and groups as well as Display Rules and Enable Rules definitions with a really user-friendly GUI. This is a must because it is almost impossible to deal with the heavy RibbonDiffXml by hand. Well... you could do that, but for sure you will loose a lot of time and won't get any added value for doing that ;)

However, sometimes, you will have to Export the RibbonDiffXml and edit it by hand because Visual Ribbon Editor doesn't cover the RibbonDiffXml specification at 100%. For example, when you want to translate specific literals to other languages different than the base language. Have you ever had to edit the RibbonDiffXml by hand? Please, share with us! :)

On previous versions didn't support the IFD connection and I had to write that implementation but in the last version now comes with ADFS / IFD support! :D

You can download the Visual Ribbon Editor from here.


2) XrmServiceToolkit

XrmServiceToolkit is a Javascript Library that helps you to connect to the Dynamics CRM Organization Service (which is a WCF service) by using Rest and Soap protocols (I recommend the first one). Supports CRUD operations for almost every entity, as well as associate, dissasociate, etc...

You can download the XrmServiceToolkit from here.


3) Sitemap Editor

Sitemap Editor saves you time because you'll no longer have to create a solution, add component, export, update Xml and reimport the solution to update the sitemap because Sitemap editor connects directly to your Dynamics CRM Organization doing that for you.

You can download the Sitemap Editor from here.

Conclusion

Hope you liked what I personally think are the most used free tools for Dynamics CRM.

Are you a Dynamics CRM Developer also and used other tools much more than these ones? Please, share them with us :)

How to install Windows 8 on your Mac

Introduction

Welcome to a new gem tutorial!!

May be you have wondered sometimes if you can install your new Windows 8 on a Mac (Intel based) computer.

Well, you can!! And not only it is working... it is working seamlessly!

Although your trackpad won't work in multitouch mode (or at least, didn't had time to check that), however, you can still use it as a functional "touchpad".  Everything else seems to work properly (internet, audio, video, apps,... note: if I find something doesn't work, I will add it here).

So, here we go with the summary...


Summary

1) Preparation
2) Boot Camp
3) Patience or coffee or siesta
4) Windows 8 installation

Preparation

Some ingredients needed:

- Windows 8 OEM (or at least, a Windows 8 Update)

- OSX 10.7.4  (Lion) or higher

- Patience...or  a lot of coffee, whatever you like: creating the bootable USB takes too long.

Important: I made a clean install of Windows 8, so for that, you will need the OEM version of Windows 8 (because we won't be installing that over Windows 7, just an empty partition). Surprisingly, it is really more difficult to find it in conventional stores than the Update from Windows 7 so, be careful, you will have to get your Windows 8 OEM  or.... basically if you already had bought the Windows 8 Update, then install your Windows 7 first, and then, apply the Windows 8 update. 

But if you go with the update, please mind there're other people who weren't able to get some drivers working.

The first thing you should take into consideration is that, if you, like me, have a Macbook Air, then you don't have a DVD drive so you will have to create an .ISO file first of your original Windows 8 DVD (I'm supposing you have the original,  ok? ;))

Use your favorite DVD burner for that. I won't enter into details. Then, copy your .ISO via USB, for instance:

Once you have your .ISO for your Air ready, or just your DVD (MacBook Pro / iMac), go to Applications -> Utilities -> Boot Camp Assistant.

Boot Camp

Click Continue:

Boot Camp Assistant assistant will let you:

- Create a new partition needed to install Windows 8 there.

- Create a USB memory with the Windows 8 .ISO and

- Download and install latest Apple drivers for Windows

Click Continue

Now, choose the location where you saved your .ISO image, and have your USB disk ready (note: you will need a USB higher than 4 Gb ;) )

Click Continue and the following window will appear, allowing you to specify the size of the new Windows partition. 

Although the minimum requirements stated by Microsoft are 16 GB for the 32-version and 20 GB for the 64-bits version (I have the 64 bits version), I preferred to set it to be 24 GB because every Windows Update will consume free space, and, because I will use an amazing Vertex 4 SSD disk of 128 GB fitted in a USB3 case too.... 

SSD Vertex 4 in a USB3 case to make it external

So, I'm using the Windows partition basically for the OS, all data like, apps, data, etc, will be saved on my SSD (I'll format it as NTFS to copy files from Windows and Mac, if you previously checked out this article explaining how to write to a NTFS drive from Mac).

Now, click Install and follow next step....

Patience or coffee or siesta

The installation process will take a little long so...

Now it is time of the patience, or your coffee break, or may be, if you can, you could try our highly recommended spanish siesta.

At the end of the process, Boot Camp will automatically start your Mac, and then, it will boot from the USB and the Windows 8 install process will begin after that.

Windows 8 installation

Windows 8 installation is really straight-fordward, just to mention:

- Go to the advanced installation

- If you get a warning alerting you when you select the partition created by Bootcamp it is because it is not formatted yet. Select it, and click Format...  The partition will be formatted then as NTFS and you will be able to install Windows on it.

- Follow the really easy instructions that come later.

The final process should look like the following: :D

Note after this installation your Mac will automatically boot on Windows. Hold your Option key while the computer starts to show the Boot Camp start menu which will allow you to select to boot with your Mac partition:

If you want your Mac to boot automatically on your Mac partition, from your Mac, after boot camp start menu, go to System Preferences -> Startup Disk.

And now select your Mac partition and click Restart.

And that's it!

Did you find this post useful? Share it (left edge of this page) to help your friends also!
Any doubts / compliments? Please, leave a comment and we will try to answer / thank you ASAP.
Do you want to get updated on new gems? Follow us by email (page top-right). We promise we won't spam you.

Thanks for reading, and hope to see you in the next gem.

How to share / copy files between Mac and Windows

Introduction

Welcome to this tutorial that will help you in sharing files between your Mac and Windows computers. 

This tutorial is based on sharing files over a network connection, so, please, first of all, verify both computers are connected to your home network successfully.

The global idea is that you can have a shared folder on your computer, and from that folder you can copy and read files elsewhere. 

Depending on where you hold the files, that is,  if you create your shared folder on Windows or create it on your Mac, we have prepared two different tutorials depending on where you start.

So, please:

Share from Windows to Mac

If you want to create your shared folder on Windows and copy files to your Mac (or other Windows PCs), please, start with this tutorial.

Share from Mac to Windows

Otherwise, if you want to create your shared folder on Mac and copy files to Windows, please, start with this tutorial.

How to Share files from Windows to Mac [Tutorial 1/3]

Summary

This tutorial will help you to share or copy files from a Windows computer to Mac or another computer in 3 easy steps.

The tutorial goes to:

1.1) Enable file sharing on Windows
1.2) How to create a shared folder on Windows
1.3) Access the Windows shared folder from Mac (or another Windows computer)

So.... let's start!

1.1) Enable file sharing on Windows 

The first step is to verify you have enabled shared files in your Windows settings. This is normally enabled by default when you connect to a Wireless network but better to check it anyway.

Supposing you have Windows 7 (on Windows 8 should be similar), go to Start -> Control Panel.

Then click on Choose home group and sharing settings under  Network & Internet as you can see highlighted above. A screen similar to the following will appear:

Click on advanced sharing settings (highlighted option). The following window will appear:

Under the Share files and printers section, check if sharing is enabled.

If it is enabled, don't do anything, your computer is ready to share files! :)

Otherwise, check it and then save your changes (at the bottom).

Now we have concluded the first step,  congratulations!

You can go ahead with the next step.

How to Share files from Windows to Mac [Tutorial 2/3]

This is the second step of this tutorial.

1.2) How to create a shared folder on Windows

Now it is time to create our shared folder.

Go to Windows Explorer:

and, anywhere you like, create a new folder. We will name it "my Shared Folder":

After that, right-click on the folder you have created and select Properties. A Window similar to this will appear:

Select Sharing tab, you should see that this folder isn't currently shared, that's ok. Now click on Share... button. A window like the following will appear:

This window will let you specify the users allowed to access to your new shared folder. By default, it is initialized with the local administrator (in other terms, you). You could use by default these settings and click the Share button. But you could also add more users.

We will add an special type of user called Everyone. This means that not only the default could access the shared folder but also any other user (be careful with this).

To add the Everyone user, type Everyone in the text box, then click Add button. After that, the new user will be added to the list of allowed users with a security level of only Read by default. This means everyone apart from the administrator (Jordi in this case), will be able to read the files in that folder only and copy them to anywhere, but, they won't be able to copy files from somewhere into it.

If you want to write in files (for example, if you want to copy files from your Mac), then, change the Read setting by Read & Write.

Finally, click on the Share button.

You will see the path used to access your shared folder from another computer.

And that's it! We are done creating the shared folder! Yiiiijjaaaaaa :D

Please, follow next step for accessing that folder from your Mac.