Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Toolkit for Visual Studio 2012

The existing CRM Developer Toolkit doesn't install on Visual Studio 2012. The reason is the installer has a check on a registry key which points to Visual Studio 2010. The way to get around this is to edit the MSI and modify this key. To modify MSI files there is a tool called Orca.

NOTE: Skip right to the end if you don't want to get your hands dirty :)
NOTE 2: See Ben's comment below if you already have VS 2010 and 2012 installed side by side with the old Developer Toolkit

Edit msi files using Orca 

Once you've opened up the installer in Orca, scroll down the list of tables until you find ReqLocator, then double click on the Key and change "10.0" to "11.0".
Click on File > Save and close orca and run the installer.

The CRM Developer Toolkit will now install without errors. However when you open Visual Studio 2012 you won't see the "Dynamics CRM" project template. To fix this issue we need to copy the project templates and item templates from the installer to the VS 2012 templates directory.

Once the installation finishes navigate to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Tools\1.0
Open another Explorer window and navigate to: C:\Users\<user>\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Templates

Then navigate to ProjectTemplates from both locations and go into Visual C# and CSharp
Copy the “Dynamics CRM” folder to the destination

Now go back to the Templates and navigate to ItemTemplates\Visual C# and CSharp, copy the folders across.

CRM Developer Toolkit on Visual Studio 2012 

If you want to skip all that manual editing, copying and pasting download the zip file from the link below, extract then run installer.bat
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12792922/crmdevelopertools_installer.zip

Enjoy!

19 Comments

  • Doesn't work for me.
    I want to use a existing crm package.
    But when i try it, i get an unsupported popup.

    Can you open an existing solution without errors?

  • Hi

    Are you trying this on a clean install or side by side?

  • I'm running VS2012 side-by-side with VS2010, so I didn't need to get the installer to work, but great tip if I do need to setup a PC with just VS2012 :)

    I manually copied the "Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Tools" from "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft" to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft".

    I then got the error "this template attempted to load component assembly", which I think is what Flip reported, so I did a repair of 2012 and all is working now :)

  • Sweet, thanks for the extended info! hopefully Flip will get it working with your details.

  • I tried it and nothing appears in VS 2012 and VS 2010 also right now.

    I reinstalled the VS 2010 version

  • I'm rolling out a new W8 RTM w/ VS2012 RTM, and installer works as expected.
    When creating a new .sln, it throws a error:

    Error: this template attempted to load component assembly 'Microsoft.CrmDeveloperTools, Version=1.0.0.0'.....

    copying these assemblies to \IDE folder it changes error to:
    Unspecified error (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80004005 (E_FAIL))

  • I also got the Microsoft.CrmDeveloperTools error with clean install, solved it somehow by removing and reinstalling, then reboot. The templates now appear twice within VS though.

    Also, I now get an error after going through the connection dialog, "Error finding visual studio location in the registry". I tried something with the VS version in one of the template files, but that doesnt seem to help.

  • I get the error 'Failed to get location of Visual Studio from registry'. when I try to make a workflow project

    I have a fresh win 7 & VS 2012 install and haven't installed VS 2010 at all

    I ran the installer from the dropbox link.

  • I dug in pretty deep on this one. The CRM 2011 Developer Toolkit's core assemblies have hard-coded references to VS2010 paths as well as VS2010 specific assemblies. Based on my digging, it is not possible to install the toolkit for use with VS2012 without VS2010 already being installed and available.

    If VS2010 is installed, the toolkit works wonderfully for VS2012. We have had no issues using it in this manner.

  • Hi Allan,

    That's pretty much my findings as we've been using VS2012 with our CRM projects for the last couple of months and it's working really well. &nbsp;All the developers have VS2010 installed as well as VS2012. &nbsp;

    We copy the Developer Toolkit files into the VS2012 directories and then we do have to do a VS2012 repair to get it all working.

    The one problem we do have is that we can't add new Web Resource files into the CrmPackage project as we get the error "The selected file is not a valid type for a web resource". &nbsp;Our workaround is just to create the file in Windows Explorer and then "Add Existing" instead of "Add New", so it's not a big deal just a little bit tedious. &nbsp;

    Do you get the same error when adding new files?

  • thanks for this post, really helped me out

  • Just a FYI... The download link on dropbox returns a 404... Nice post however.

  • Any news on this yet? I have a clean install of W8/VS2012 and getting the same error!

  • Just FYI...
    I've got it working by doing the following:
    Prerequisite: Got VS2010 and VS2012 installed side-by-side

    - install the toolkit so it works for VS2010

    - Now do what Ben noted as a comment:
    "Copied the 'Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Tools' from "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft" to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft"."

    - When I opened VS2012 I didn't get an error like Ben did but I still repaired VS2012 via "Control Panel" (this might take a while (and a couple reboots))

    - when the repair is done it noted that not everything is repaired. Just ignore this warning

    - now open (after reboot) VS2012 and you should have the CRM 2011 Dev Toolkit in it.

  • Update:
    I can create a project and add files in a package project (by using 'add existing'). But after the deploy VS2012 crashes. (the deploy is done but a crashing VS2012 is unworkable.)

  • For anyone who reads this, Microsoft just updated the SDK on 1/7/13 to include support for VS 2012 so these workarounds are no longer required.

  • Thanks Derek. Just installed it and it works smoothly.
    Cheers

  • I've tried to install the new SDK toolkit but it still crashes. I've also tried to undo this 'hack' on the page but this also doesn't work.

    The only thing I haven't tried is to uninstall VS2012 completely.

    @ VJ: How did you update the SDK?

    Cheers

  • Does anyone out there know if the CRM 2011 Developer Toolkit works with the VS 2012 Express? I've been trying to install and receiving errors and haven't found any specific references to the SDK and Express version anywhere. Thanks.

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