In the previous OneByte article, we explored two ways to deploy a unified development environment in Microsoft Dynamics 365. In part 2, we will cover installing development tools in Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.
About development tools?
All application development is done using Visual Studio, the exclusive Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for this purpose. The development tools installed in Visual Studio support tasks like debugging and local testing.
Prerequisites:
1. As a prerequisite, you need access to a provisioned developer-focused sandbox environment.
2. The user account you’ll be using for development in the sandbox environment must be assigned the System Administrator role.
3. The development machine should have at least 16 GB of free space on the local system drive to download the extension and metadata.
4. Download and Install Visual studio 2022 professional or Enterprise with below components from Download Visual Studio Tools – Install Free for Windows, Mac, Linux (microsoft.com).
Workloads
Individual components
5. Download and Install SQL Server Express from Download Microsoft® SQL Server® 2022 Express from Official Microsoft Download Center.
Select New SQL Server standalone installation or add features to an existing installation.
Remember to select Local DB in the Feature selection tab.
6. Install the Power Platform extension for Visual Studio.
Prerequisites:
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 or 2022.
- .NET Framework 4.6.2 (required only for plug-in and workflow activity development)
- C# programming language
Once Visual studio and SQL server express 2022 have been installed, open Visual studio and click on Extensions -> Manage Extensions.
Search for Power Platform Tools for VS 2022 and click on install.
7. Install the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations package.
a) Click on Tools -> Connect to Dataverse
b) Click on Login.
Note: In case Display List of Available Organizations is ticked then system will show the list of all the Power Platform Organizations along with the Regions, which the user has access to. User can select the environment which he/she would like to connect to.
Show Advanced provides the option of further filtering the application based on region.
c) Select Cr89537 solution and click on Done.
d) Dialog for downloading the F&O metadata will appear. Click on Yes.
System will start downloading the metadata. Files will be downloaded in C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Dynamics365\<ApplicationVersion folder
This will include PackageLocalDirectory, Cross reference DB, F&O VS tools and Trace Parser file. PackagesLocaDirectory zipped file and Cross reference DB bak file will be shown as 0 file size. Only when you will close Visual studio, you will find the actual size of the files.
You will need to unzip the PackagesLocalDirectory zipped file.
e) Check Application explorer and If you cannot find the Finance and Operations tools in the application explorer, . check the below folder for the FinOps installer file and run the installer. This will install the tools for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.
f) Once the VSIX is installed the application explorer will be available. The below screen will appear when you open the application explorer.
g) Select the application name on the left-hand side and click on save. Above screen is also available through Extensions -> Dynamics 365 -> Configure Metadata
Notes:
- Make sure above folders exist in the local drive. Folders for reference metadata should where PackageLocaldirectory contents were downloaded where connecting to dataverse was also performed.
- Any new model/package created through Visual studio will create new Folder for your own metadata. Any artifact in new model/package will also be added up in same folder.
This is how you can install the development tools and get started with the development in D365 Finance and operations.
Remember to review part one to learn how to deploy unified development environments for the ultimate developer experience on Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations.
About the expert
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Tanuj Goel, D365 F&SC Technical Capability Lead, OnActuate
Tanuj is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain professional with more than 20 years of experience in development, upgrades, integrations, DevOps, LCS tools and deployment in Dynamics AX and D365 F&SC. He is also experienced with performance testing using JMeter and test automation tools like RSAT and Leapwork. |
The “OneByte” blog series are technical how-to articles by OnActuate’s expert consultants covering Microsoft Business Applications (Microsoft Dynamics, Power Platform) and related technologies. Have a topic you’d like to learn more about? Email us at info@onactuate.com!
