Blog Post: How Does the CRM 2011 5.0.14 SDK Solution Down-level Utility Work? – Part 1

CRM 2011 Rollup 12/Polaris introduced new components which integrated with the existing system. It also pulled in the activity feeds solution into the base CRM solution. With both of the above changes we’re no longer able to develop solutions in a Rollup 12 environment and install into an organization that’s sitting on a lower version. To get around this issue the CRM Team developed a tool called “solutiondownlevelutility.exe” which is included as part of the 5.0.14 SDK.

So let’s take the covers off and see how this solutiondownlevelutility.exe tool magically down-levels solutions.

The tool has a list of known set of “Polaris” components (about 147 of them), mostly attributes but also includes option sets, relationships, saved queries and system forms.

Here’s a sneak preview of the new components.

Click the link below to view the full list.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12792922/solution-downleveling-tool.csv