ERD Generator Tool for CRM 2013

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Aileen Gusni

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Hi All, in some projects, for the technical documentation, some customers want us to provide ERD in the Technical or Design Document. Creating entities and their relationships in CRM is very easy and sometimes, we did not have time to draw the ERD first, we created the entities and plus the mockup or prototype then present to the users, for key users, seeing the System directly or using Power Point Presentation Slides, it is a better way to them to understand in high-level, but in term of documentation as good consultant, we need to give them proper documentation and ERD can be your best answer.

“Visual Represents more than thousand words.”

In Standard CRM you can download the OOB Logical Entity Relationship Diagram:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-my/download/details.aspx?id=41669

In CRM SDK, you can have generate ERD by using Metadata and you select which entities you want to generate.

See this topic:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj602918.aspx

But you need to use command to run the tool

MetadataDiagramConsole.exe new_bankaccount new_safedepositbox

There is no User Interface.
But, don’t worry. Now, to generate the complete ERD, you can try to use this tool with an UI, of course, created by my friend.

To download the tool, CLICK HERE

(Later you need to rename the .doc to .zip extension)

To see the detail, click here.

Screenshot provided by me:

1. Extract the .zip file and run the ERD Generator.

2. You are not connected at the first run, you need to connect first.

3. First Connection (as usual you need to connect to which CRM Server, OnPremise or Online and use what authentication)

4. After connected

5. And you just focus on these settings:

Entity Name: Select your Entity that you want to generate.

File Path: will get auto-filled after you run the tool

Checkbox Include CSV: If you tick then it will also generate .CSV file beside generating the .VSD file opened using Visio.

Then you just finish by click this icon:

Then it will auto-fill the path value and generate it.

Just wait it..

The system is trying to generate the ERD Document.

Now….finally you see this window.

Then, you just go to the folder and you see the generated ERD..

Wow..Congratulation you have created an ERD + CSV (if you ticked) with the help of this tool.

*If you found weird font, then you better change the Font to Calibri because it can be your PC does not have the expected font.

An excellent tool, good job, worth to try!

Hope this helps you.
Thanks.