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Xrm Tools is a Visual Studio extension that simplifies plugin development for Microsoft Dataverse (Power Platform). It enhances developer productivity by offering:

• Attribute-driven plugin registration
• Source-generated dependency injection
• Integrated plugin and Custom API registration from within Visual Studio
• Context-aware IntelliSense for Dataverse entities and messages and other metadata.

[!Note]

Xrm Tools is a development-time tool. Your compiled plugin assemblies do not depend on it. You can build, deploy, and execute your plugins without Xrm Tools installed.

Xrm Tools does not impose any particular framework or base class for your plugins – you can structure your code as you wish. The only requirement is to use certain attributes in your code to declaratively specify plugin registration details (and optionally to enable advanced features like dependency injection). These attributes are design-time annotations and have no effect on the actual runtime behavior of your plugin assemblies.

To get started, see:

• Installation and Setup
• Writing a Plugin
• Writing a Custom API
• Metadata Attributes

FAQ

• Q: What happens if a developer who doesn't have Xrm Tools, opens the project I have written with the help of Xrm Tools?
• A: Even if a developer doesn't have the Xrm Tools extension. They will be able to build and register plugins as usual using any other tool. However they will lose the productivity features that come with Xrm Tool.
• Q: What happens to the projects I have written with Xrm Tools if I uninstall the extension?
• A: If you uninstall Xrm Tools extension, you can still build and register your plugin using the traditional tools like Plugin Registration Tool. The code generated by the tool will remain as your code. However, you will lose the productivity features that come with Xrm Tools.