After a long time I am writing a post on CrmXpress and I will post my story so far, separately.

As of this post, I have a very important announcement to make. There is yet another release from CrmXpress and this time it is CrmXpress OptionSet Manager For Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. As the name suggests it's a very simple utility to manage OptionSets [Local and Global] within CRM 2011 and helps to automate really boring tasks i.e. to maintain [CRUD] option sets manually.

Here is a screenshot from the documentation :

Click Here to see the documentation in case you need any help with the usage of the app.

Click Here to download the latest stable build. As usual we intend to develop it further and we appreciate your feedback on the same.

PS: Watch out for few more CrmXpress releases in very near future.

Every Microsoft Dynamics CRM developer runs into a situation when JavaScript + SOAP call is the only logical way out. Now with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 things have changed and old solutions which worked really well with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 don't work anymore. The only way you can achieve this is to use the solution provided in SDK to dump raw SOAP packet and then using Jamie's Soap formatter tool (http://crm2011soap.codeplex.com) you can get a JavaScript that can be used against CRM 2011. Now this is a lengthy process so it is time consuming and as it involves multiple manual steps that make it more error-prone. I am always bit lazy when it comes to monotonous tasks which don't add value to my current engagement. That makes me a big fan of automation, and by automation I mean reduce my efforts to minimal manual inputs to get things done.

On the great journey of automation, inspired by many others, here I would like to present one of the first utility from CrmXpress - SmartSoapLogger v1.0. It is a very simple tool that integrates all of the above mentioned manual tasks in one click and helps you generate required code to make JavaScript + SOAP calls. This tool is available on CodePlex at: http://smartsoaplogger.codeplex.com.

It works with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 On-Premise as well as Online (With some creative thinking this utility can work with CRM 4.0 as well just you will have to put some efforts in order to introduce CRM 4.0 support). Thanks to Jamie Miley (http://mileyja.blogspot.com) the source code for this tool is available on CodePlex at: http://smartsoaplogger.codeplex.com/releases/76542/download/301730.

Also I would like to thank Jamie Miley for his efforts on building SOAP formatter (http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/03/crm-2011-jscript-soap-request-formatter.html) as I could build this tool very quickly using his codebase.
Here is a small video demo where SSL (I know SmartSoapLogger is a long name) connects with CRM Online and generates script and SOAP packets for a WhoAmI call.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM lets you create trace files that monitor the actions performed by various Microsoft Dynamics CRM components. For example, CRM Async service can create its own trace file, which enables you to troubleshoot error messages or other issues with CRM Async service. Apart from that, these Trace files can be an excellent resource for an experienced CRM Developer to understand what exactly is going on behind the scenes.

CrmXpress TraceHelper helps you to enable/disable tracing for Microsoft Dynamics CRM with few clicks. It also gives you the option to manage the trace files from within a single window.

You can download it from here : http://www.crmxpress.net/Tools/CrmXpress.Win.TraceHelper.zip
 
Remember: once the settings are applied, IIS must be restarted to take the effect.  

It's been a long time since I thought to put this to public. I have used this tool for a quite a long time now. Basically, it allows you to create profiles with username and password. Now being CRM developer many a times you would want to launch CRM Web interface with another user's credentials. Generally, you would do so by using Run As or by creating a shortcut that will ask for credentials when it is clicked OR by disabling automatic logon in intranet zone.

I wanted to come up with a lot easier way to achieve this. That's why I made a simple utility that stores usernames and credentials and set of applications in a profile. You can create as many profiles as you want and add as many applications as you need. Credentials you provided are encrypted and stored with user settings. To add application, all you need to do is drag and drop a shortcut of the application or the application itself on to CrmXpress Run As Gui tool.

You can download it from here : http://www.crmxpress.net/Tools/CrmXpress.Win.RunAsGUI.zip

Your feedback is really important for me to provide feature upgrades/bugfixes.

Kindly note that I have tested this utility on Win7/Server2K8/Server2K8R2 x86/x64 editions with .NET Framework 2.0.

Here are steps to start using this tool.

1. Launch CrmXpress.Win.RunAsGui.exe
2. Click on Add. It will auto fill current user name and domain/workgroup name.
3. Enter password.
4. Click on Save. Your default user profile is now created.
5. Click on Add again. It will auto fill current user name and domain/workgroup name. Change the name with any other domain/workgroup user name of your choice.
6. Enter password for the user name that you have entered.
7. Click on Save.
8. Now you will have two profiles and you can access them via Profiles drop down list.
9. Drag any application shortcut on to the CrmXpress.Win.RunAsGui's User Interface.
10. The application will be added to the applications list for a given profile and it will be launched with credentials of whichever user profile you have selected.

Disclaimer 

• This program is provided as is without any guarantees or warranty.
• Although the author has attempted to find and correct any bugs in the free software programs, the author is not responsible for any damage or losses of any kind caused by the use or misuse of the programs.
• The author is under no obligation to provide support, service, corrections, or upgrades to this free software program.

This book is a gift from the Windows Phone 7 team at Microsoft to the programming community, and I am proud to have been a part of it. Within the pages that follow, I show you the basics of writing applications for Windows Phone 7 using the C# programming language with the Silverlight and XNA 2D frameworks. For more information, check out this page : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2010/10/28/free-ebook-programming-windows-phone-7-by-charles-petzold.aspx

You can download a PDF here (12.5 MB).

You can download an XPS here (26.7 MB).

And you can download the ebook’s sample code here (5.03 MB).

Microsoft Press has been providing free ebooks on regular interval and this very handy book has come out as a gift to the developers who are moving to Visual Studio 2010.

Here are the links for the book and related code download
 

You can download a PDF of the book here.

You can download an XPS of the book here.

And you can download the book’s sample code here.

Ya, this one has been a part of my dev tool kit for many a years and sometimes when I don't have access to regular tools I still use this one.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/6/7b6abd84-7841-4978-96f5-bd58df02efa2/winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel_21.exe

It is a simple Virtual CD ROM driver from Microsoft and I have used it successfully on many WinX systems. It is super easy to use and is no-nonsense stuff. No Installation required, point to the driver and start using that's it.

Few weeks back I stumbled upon this awesome code library http://1code.codeplex.com/

It has lots of code samples which you could use in your application and also learn various development techniques.

From CodePlex's about us of All-In One Code Framework

Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework delineates the framework and skeleton of Microsoft development techniques through typical sample codes in three popular programming languages (Visual C#, VB.NET, Visual C++). Each sample is elaborately selected, composed, and documented to demonstrate one frequently-asked, tested or used coding scenario based on our support experience in MSDN newsgroups and forums. If you are a software developer, you can fill the skeleton with blood, muscle and soul. If you are a software tester or a support engineer like us, you may extend the sample codes a little to fit your specific test scenario or refer your customer to this project if the customer's question coincides with what we collected.

The project has more than 450 code examples that cover 24 Microsoft development technologies such as Azure, Windows 7 and Silverlight 3. The collection grows by six samples per week. You can find the up-to-date list of samples in All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog.

Check out this blog entry by Somasegar on new Visual Studip Process Template which can be very useful for Dev teams employing Scrum model.