Developing Plug-ins

Plug-Ins. I recently had to develop my first plugin and to say the least it was an experience. After ploughing through numerous blogs and documentation I finally got it working. Here are some tips if you are starting out to develop plug-ins.

1. Ensure you have the latest copies of the SDK dlls. If not you could run into earlier sdk bugs.
   
2. Ensure tht you have the latest update rolloups. My plug-in was throwing http 401 errors until I installed the latest rollups.


3. Use dynamic entities instead of the web service references. It is a little harder to understand and get working but will payoff in the long run.


4. Learn to debug plug-ins and how to find the detailed error messages. You will need it.


5. Understand the entity-message mapping.


6. Download the Microsoft CRM Developer toolkit.


7. Download the latest Plug-in registration tool.

I hope the above helps.