Documenting your MSCRM 3.0 Schema @ Mitch Milam's Dynamics CRM Discussions

Documenting your MSCRM 3.0 Schema

Posted on February 11th, 2006 mitch Print 7 comments

MSCRM 3.0 ships with a really cool web page that allows you to view the current CRM system schema. If you browse to the following location:

http://[your crm server]/sdk/list.aspx

You will receive a list of all of the entities within the current CRM system.

Clicking on the Definition icon ( little yellow box ), will show a web page containing a complete overview of just about everything you need to know about that Entity: Type information, Attributes, and Relationships.

Copy that page, paste it into an Excel worksheet, and you have fully documented most of the information about that Entity.

Caveats:
- The List doesn't show you any JavaScript Event information ( OnLoad, OnSave, OnChange ).
- The Entities are listed by their Schema name so if you've renamed system entities, you will find them listed under their original name.
- Custom entities are listed by their Schema name as well: new_entityname. ( Assuming you haven't altered the custom prefix. )
I think the thing I like the most about this feature is that it let's me see the Entity layout in a quick, at-a-glance, view without having to resort to SQL Enterprise Manager or SQL Query Analyzer. This is very useful when you are creating several related Entities that need to have similar or exact table structures.

Customization, Dynamics CRM
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7 responses to “Documenting your MSCRM 3.0 Schema”
1. Inside MS-CRM : CRM metadata browser February 14th, 2006 at 16:47
  
  [...] CRM metadata browser It was interesting to see Mitch Milam's post about the metadata browser. This was a little tool I put together pre-V1.0 ship, but which didn't make the schedule until V3. Mitch points out the "published" component which displays the entity metadata in a nice format. If you edit list.aspx you'll see two sections commented out that provide links to individual entity schemas. This is unsupported and undocumented functionality that we considered calling "sample code". Turns out that it made it into the box but not enabled by default. These schemas work nicely with the code generators that I blogged about a while back. [...]
2. Ryan Farley February 15th, 2006 at 15:10
  
  That is just awesome. Very cool.
  
  Thanks.
  -Ryan
3. Mitch Milam’s Microsoft Discussions » Blog Archive » Exporting CRM Attribute Metadata March 6th, 2007 at 09:07
  
  [...] Don't forget that you can also view CRM metadata via the CRM Metadata Browser by visiting the following link: [...]
4. Rob Moore May 29th, 2008 at 16:28
  
  Exactly what I am needing, thanks for sharing this info!
  
  Any thoughts on how I could get a similar list to show OnLoad, OnSave, OnChange stuff?
  
  Thanks
5. Rory July 24th, 2008 at 10:21
  
  This is useful, thanks very much. Next Q :-) is there a way to change the properties of an entity in an existing implementation to allow it to be viewable in advanced find?
6. mitch July 24th, 2008 at 11:33
  
  Rory,
  
  Edit the Entity, go to the Attributes section, then edit an Attribute.
  
  Set Searchable to Yes.
  
  Publish the Entity and you're good.
  
  Mitch
7. Nitin Dhawan September 29th, 2008 at 05:27
  
  Really usefull. Thanks you very much.
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