Connect to CRM via a console application

Connect to CRM via a console application.

If you are writing some complicated business logic inside your custom workflow activity or a plugin there is a high chance of your code throwing exception once you have registered them and started testing.

What I do is I create a simple Visual Studio C# console application and connect to CRM. Then debug the business logic in the console application first and make sure everything is working well before I insert the code into the plugin or workflow activity skeleton. This saves lot of time as debugging plugins and custom workflow activities is not very straight forward.

Creating a Console application is very easy and once created you can use it for multiple projects as you need to change only few variables.

Step 1:

Open visual studio and create a new project of type Console Application as below:

 

Step 2:

Under solution explorer right click on the project created and click properties. Then under the Application tab change the Target Framework to .Net Framework 4.5.2

If you don’t have this version of .net installed in your computer download it from Microsoft site and install.

Step 3:

Refer the following assemblies. CRM dlls can be found under the bin folder in CRM SDK. You can download the SDK from Microsoft site.

Update your Program.cs class like below.

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using System.Threading.Tasks;

using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk;

using System.ServiceModel.Description;

using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client;

using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Messages;

using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Metadata;

using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Query;

namespace CRM2016ConsoleApplication

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        { 

            #region credentials

            string SoapOrgServiceUri = "https://CRMUrl/OrganizationName/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc";

            ClientCredentials credentials = new ClientCredentials();

            credentials.UserName.UserName = "username";

            credentials.UserName.Password = "password";

            #endregion                     

            Uri serviceUri = new Uri(SoapOrgServiceUri);

            OrganizationServiceProxy proxy = new OrganizationServiceProxy(serviceUri, null, credentials, null);

            proxy.EnableProxyTypes();

            IOrganizationService orgService = (IOrganizationService)proxy;

            XrmServiceContext serviceContext = new XrmServiceContext(orgService);

        }

    }

}

Update username, password and crm url.

Now you have OrganizationService instance and if you have built your early bound classes then you have access to the ServiceContext too. In this example they are orgService and serviceContext respectively.

Now you can build your CRM queries with hard coded GUIDs to test your business logic. Once all tested and good to go move them to your plugins. J