If you’re anywhere within 100km of Power Apps or D365 development, you’ll know of, and most likely use XRM Toolbox on a daily basis. It is easy though to only use it for a few purposes and forget to look back through at what tools are available and what you could use.

Like investing half an hour every so often to update your bookmarks if you work in a browser a lot, investing some time to see what tools could improve your productivity almost always leads to wins in my experience.

I took a look last week through the tool library and decided to come up with a list of what XRM Toolbox tools I have used, am using, or plan to use soon:

*Bold = new to me, trying or going to be trying shortly.

• Fetch XML Builder
  • How much do I use it? Almost every working day
  • What do I use it for? Creating queries to get results immediately to validate bugs or problems, and creating queries to use in cloud flows or code
  • How would I rate it? 4/5. Lightweight, easy.
• Dataverse REST Builder
  • How much do I use it? Every now and then.
  • What do I use it for? Creating or validating queries to use elsewhere, or easily and quickly executing functions like the CalculateRollupField request
  • How would I rate it? 3/5 (Tip: It is not immediately clear how you can actually run a request within the app. To do so, fill in the details in the main section, then view the XHR tab. Click Copy to Editor and then Execute Code)
• Solution Components Mover
  • How much do I use it? Quite a lot – almost everytime I do a manual deployment or need to move things around
  • What do I use it for? Copying multiple solutions into one
  • How would I rate it? 3/5. Could do with some work on the UI
• Bulk Data Updater
  • How much do I use it? Every now and then.
  • What do I use it for? Carrying out some bulk updates quick and easy after creating the query in FetchXML Builder.
  • How would I rate it? 4/5. Solid, simple and clear
• SQL 4 CDS
  • How much do I use it? Rarely
  • What do I use it for? Using SQL to query the Dataverse
  • How would I rate it? 3/5
• Data Transporter
  • How much do I use it? Rarely.
  • What do I use it for? Transporting master data between environments on an ad-hoc basis.
  • How would I rate it? 3/5. Could do with some work on the UI.
• Dataverse Triggers
• Environment Processes Comparer
  • How much do I use it? Every now and then
  • What do I use it for? Comparing the state of Power Automate cloud flows across environments
  • How would I rate it? 4/5
• Environment Variables Manager
  • How much do I use it? Every now and then.
  • What do I use it for? Updating environment variables in bulk
  • How would I rate it? 3/5. Does what it says on the tin, but the interface is not very intuitive.
• Get Last Logged in time for CRM Users
• Power Automate Flow Explorer
• Webresources Manager
  • How much do I use it? Every now and then
  • What do I use it for? Quickly iterating on Javascript web resources
  • How would I rate it? 4/5. Solid tool, nice and simple.
• XRM Solutions Dependency Checker