Developer Toolkit (Beta) for CRM 2011-- A Catalyst for Dynamics CRM 2011 Development

The latest beta version of Developer toolkit(Integrated with VS 2010 IDE) for Dynamics CRM 2011 is included in the SDK. In the SDK, you could find it in the tools folder. I could see it as a catalyst for Dynamics CRM development. It saves a lot of time. Also its well structured.  Lets have a quick look at the beta version of Developer Toolkit for CRM 2011. You could find the following files in the developertoolkit folder. Installation of Developer toolkit is very easy.

You could see the following installation wizard and its super quick installation.

After installation, if you try to create a new project, you could see a section called Dynamic CRM as shown below. The ideal option would be to opt a solution. Because it would contain all the necessary elements for a Dynamic CRM 2011 project development. But choice is yours.

Next step is a connection wizard to connect to Dynamics CRM Server as shown below.

It would assume that we might need a silverlight project and displays various options for silverlight project. Again its optional.

It provides a very cool CRM Explorer. So "Dynamics CRM is visible from VS"

Lets have a look at the solution. As mentioned earlier it provides the necessary components for Dynamics CRM Development. Lets try to add a web resource.

Next step is to choose the web resource file type.

Please note the properties window of the web resource file.

In order to deploy something, you could choose the following option found on CRMPackage.

Do you think its a catalyst for Dynamics CRM 2011 Development?

Connections in CRM 2011

In simple words, 'Connections in CRM 2011' is a feature by which you could define relation between two entities ( including custom entities).
For Instance, an account namely AP could connect to a contact Mr.George as an employee(connection role).

In a connection, One record is related to another record based on a connection role.

A Connection always provides 2 options for us.

1. To Another (To another enitity record)
2. To Me (To the logged in User)

How could we establish connection from Main Page:

But the Connection button gets disabled if more than one records were selected.

How could we establish connection from Entity form:

Its possible to view all exisiting connections of a particular record by clicking on the 'Connections' left navigation item.

The key players of 'Connections' feature are 2 entities.

1. Connection Entity ( Can be customized)-Relationship between two entities.

2. Connection Role Entity( Can NOT be customized) -Role describing a relationship between a two records.

Connection Role is the key element of a Connection which makes it meaningful.

How could we configure a Connection Role in CRM 2011:

Configuring a Connection Role in CRM 2011 involves 3 steps.

1. Describe Connection Role-- This includes defining  new name for the connection role and choosing  a connection role category.

2. Select record types

3.Choose mathing Role (Optional)-- This is a kind of intellisense

For instance, If you choose Role (To) in a Connection then CRM will automatically populate the Connection Role (From) if a matching role already defined.

So lets create a Connection based on the configured Connection role.

Here we go !

How to enable Connections at Entity Level in CRM 2011:

When you create an entity, you could decide enable/ disable Connections with the following setting.