Automate the process of exporting the default solution from Dynamics CRM 2011

Question

I am responsible for multiple Dynamics CRM environments where we have our customizations deployed. What I would like to do is automate the process of exporting the default solution to the file system. From there I can compare the solutions from different environments.

Is there a way to do this via PowerShell or perhaps the Dynamics SDK?

Answer 1

Take a look at the "XRM CI Framework" by Wael Hamze , which has some PowerShell cmdlets that wrap some common operations that you can perform using the SDK. The distro includes an " ExtractCustomizations.ps1 " script that probably does most of what you want already.

He's also published a blog post on how to " Automate your Dynamics CRM Builds and Deployments with PowerShell ". In particular, you'd be interested in the Import-XrmSolution and Export-XrmSolution cmdlets, which wrap the ImportSolutionRequest and ExportSolutionRequest , respectively.

Links:

• Version supporting CRM 2013 SP1: https://xrmciframework.codeplex.com/ (source plus binaries)
• Version supporting CRM 2011: https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/018d3312-cc36-469e-95eb-79e066b0aa64 (binaries only)

Answer 2

The CRM 2011 SDK includes methods to Export and Import solutions. When exporting the destination is a zip file in the file system.