XRM Tools for Visual Studio — Official Release
After weeks of hard work, countless improvements, I’m thrilled to announce the first official release (no longer in preview!) of the XRM Toolkit for Visual Studio — an extension that brings Power Platform development natively into Visual Studio.
Whether you’re building plugins, custom APIs, or simply want a smarter, faster, and more integrated development experience — this is the release to try.
What’s New in This Release?
A Seamless Environment Management Experience
Power Platform development revolves around environments — and this release introduces a beautifully integrated environment manager directly into the Visual Studio experience.
- Connect to an environment instantly from the Visual Studio toolbar.
- Create new environments in just a few clicks.
- Smart environment detection when opening solutions tied to environments not yet in your list.
When you open a solution with an unfamiliar environment, the extension now shows a notification banner at the top of Visual Studio. Just click to open the environment manager — fully pre-filled for you. It’s as easy as “click, confirm, connect.”
Faster, More Reliable, More Polished
This version isn’t just about shiny new features — it’s about performance, stability, and polish. Many subtle bugs and inconsistencies have been fixed. You’ll notice:
- Even faster startup.
- improved UX
- Improved plugin and custom API generation.
- More resilient behavior covering more scenario and edge cases.
Why This Matters
Until now, Power Platform development has often felt detached from Visual Studio’s core experience. This extension changes that. It brings the developer-first mindset into the world of Power Platform by:
- Supporting strongly-typed development workflows.
- Leveraging Visual Studio features like IntelliSense, code navigation, and refactoring.
- Making the Power Platform feel like a first-class citizen in Visual Studio.
Learn More
The GitHub repository includes an extensive wiki, with walkthroughs, advanced usage, and contribution guidelines.
If you’re new, check out:
Join the Force
Your feedback is what keeps this project growing. If you:
- Have suggestions
- Encounter an issue
- Want to contribute
…just open an issue on GitHub. Let’s make this the best development tool for Power Platform together.
Try It Now — You May Never Look Back
You can install the extension directly from the Visual Studio Marketplace, and experience the new way to build for Power Platform.
| XRM Tools |
If you’ve tried it before, try it again. If you haven’t, this is the release to start with.