CRM 2011 Entity Metadata Browser

The Metadata Browser is one of the tools that has been around since CRM 3.0 (I believe, at least V4) that simply put I just forgot about. Today, Jim Daly, Microsoft CRM Team SDK Guru Extraordinaire pointed me back in that direction in answering a question I emailed him about an attribute in the Post Entity. (if I could only remember half of what I forgot, I would be 2x better off than I am now)

In CRM 4 you could just browse to the Metadata browser in your on premise environment. In support of the new cloud world we live in the Entity Metadata Browser is now a managed solution that you can import into your CRM environment regardless of where it lives.

The browser provides significant insight into the underpinnings of all 238 entities that are built into the out of the box solution. This insight gives the developer much needed information on all the parameters of every entity.

To get access to the Metadata Browser you need to first download and install the SDK onto your local drive. It is totally free. You don’t need to be a CRM partner either to get it. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=24004

After you download and extract it, navigate to SDK\SampleCode\JS\SOAPForJScript\Script\SDK.Metadata.js in the folder you extracted it to.

After you have done that just go to CRM and import and publish the managed solution – metadatabrowser_1_0_0_3_managed.zip. Not to be snippy but if you need help doing this the information in the browser won’t be meaningful to you.

Then you can get access to the browser in one of two ways:

1. Navigate directly to it by this url:
<your organization URL>/WebResources/sample_/MetaDataBrowser/MetaDataBrowser.htm

2. Go to Customizations, Solutions, double click on the Metadata Browser solution in the grid view and it will open up in a new Window.

There is also a read-me document in the same folder on your drive with the managed solution.

Have a great coding day!