This week Jim Daly announced an updated Metadata Browser for CRM 2011 that is included in the latest SDK. I had a chance to play around with it today and it is pretty slick.
UI Improvements
A handful of UI improvements were made to the Metadata Browser which makes it a vast improvement over the previous version. First off, the Metadata Browser now works with multiple browsers (Chrome, IE 9 and 10, and Firefox). This is great timing with the upcoming enhancements to CRM which includes multiple browser support. The UI also has been updated to provide a better look and feel as shown below.
Metadata Browser UI – Initial Page
Metadata Browser UI – Browse Entity Page
Property Filters
The Metadata Browser now also allows the ability to filter the list of entities by properties. This enhancement will make it much easier to quickly and easily find the entities you’re interested in. In my example below, I’m filtering the entities where IsVisibleInMobile is set to true.
Which filters my list of entities down to the following 14 entities that are visible in Mobile Express.
Solution Improvements
The Metadata Browser solution now only contains three web resources which helps reduce the clutter of solution components in the target organization. This is a nice improvement as browsing your default solution is easier with fewer components.
Last but not least, the Metadata Browser is no longer added to the Site Map of the target organization so that users can install the Metadata Browser in their main development organization and not have to worry about uninstalling it before exporting their own solution that contains the Site Map. Since it is no longer added to the Site Map, the way to access the Metadata Browser is to open it from the solution’s configuration page. It can also be bookmarked for use in your favorite browser.
Conclusion
The Metadata Browser is a great resource to have. It’s a quick and easy way to reference your organization’s metadata and the new improvements make it even more useful. It’s isolated into one small solution that won’t affect any of your current solution components that you plan on deploying across environments. The ease to install and use, along with it providing an easy way to browse your metadata make this solution a must have. Props to Jim Daly!
For a full list of improvements, see Jim Daly’s post - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2013/01/14/new-and-improved-metadata-browser-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011.aspx.