We create XrmToolBox tools at Dynamics 365 Saturdays!

Jonas Rapp creating XrmToolBox tools at D365 Saturdays

2019-02-122020-08-21 ~ Jonas Rapp ~ 2 Comments

The community of developers for Microsoft Dynamics 365 / CRM in general and for XrmToolBox in particular is a great bunch of people. But I wish there were more of us – the more the merrier ?

The D365 Saturday phenomenon with pro bono speakers at a full day event, free of charge for participants, has spread like wildfire over the last couple of years.
The connection to the XrmToolBox is obvious:

Both were started by CRM heroes (Raz for the Saturdays and Tanguy for the toolbox).
Both are driven by a passion to share and a love for the platform.
Both do these things without any ambition to “get rich quick” (or ever).

I got an idea to combine these two phenomena.

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Auto Numbering existing records in Microsoft Dynamics 365 / CRM

2019-02-022020-09-10 ~ Jonas Rapp ~ 23 Comments

As the creator of the Auto Number Manager tool in XrmToolBox, I get two questions more than any other questions:

How can I number existing records?
How can I add dynamic content to the numbers?

To answer these questions once and for all, I will post my suggestions in two articles. I will step way outside my comfort zone of coding the solutions and give you strictly no-code alternatives.
Well, I do feel reasonably comfortable, since I wrote the code in the tools we need… ?

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We created an XrmToolBox tool at Dynamics 365 Saturday Stockholm!

2018-11-152020-08-21 ~ Jonas Rapp ~ 3 Comments

Last Saturday some 100+ experts, partners and user of Microsoft Dynamics 365 met up at the Microsoft offices in Stockholm, Sweden for a day packed with content at the Dynamics 365 Saturday event.

I delivered two sessions at the event, and in one of them I took on a somewhat challenging session called

Let’s build an XrmToolBox tool!

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Managed or Unmanaged solutions – a hot case still slightly open

2018-11-072020-09-10 ~ Jonas Rapp ~ 6 Comments

The case is obviously not entirely closed.

My recent article Case closed: Managed or Unmanaged solutions in Microsoft Dynamics 365 / CRM received a lot of attention, and sparked writers, podcasters, tweeters and commenters around the world to give feedback, yell at me, agree with me, or simply continue the discussion both publicly and privately.

Readers of the “Case Closed” article last week.

I have received virtual hugs and probably lost quite a few followers.

I really enjoy following and participating in the discussion, and one comment I got today from Anthony Ellis (read it here) inspired me to write a follow-up article. So here it goes.

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Case closed: Managed or Unmanaged solutions in Microsoft Dynamics 365 / CRM

2018-09-302020-08-21 ~ Jonas Rapp ~ 9 Comments

If you have problems shifting gears in your car, you don’t call Volvo to say “Hey, I don’t like how this gear shifting thing works, so I’m just going to use reverse and drive backwards from now on.”
What you probably do is call them to say “I’m having trouble shifting, you need to fix the problems or show me how to use it properly.“

Ever since Microsoft introduced the Solution platform with Dynamics CRM 2011, there has been an ongoing and never ending discussion about whether to deploy managed or unmanaged solutions.

I can’t say I can end the discussions or solve all problems. But I will try to convince you – there is no discussion.

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Telling Visual Studio not to use latest packages

2018-09-052020-08-21 ~ Jonas Rapp ~ 1 Comment

When your C# projects are referencing NuGet packages, you are always encouraged to update to latest version.
This can be annoying, when you really don’t want to.

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FetchXML Builder and Friends at D365UG Virtual Summer Camp

2018-07-242020-08-21 ~ Jonas Rapp ~ 2 Comments

On August 7-9, the first ever Virtual Summer Camp for the Dynamics 365 platform will take place.

During this free event the D365UG offer some 30+ sessions with focus on Customer Service and Field/Project Service.

I will be doing one of a few cross vertical sessions, where I discuss and demonstrate some useful XrmToolBox tools that help customizers, administrators and users with information analysis and enhancing the capabilities of the system.

Below is a description of my session – enjoy and make sure you sign up! Click the link: D365UG Virtual Summer Camp

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