In this article I will demonstrate how you can use a LINQPad script to very quickly update Dynamics Solution Numbers in a consistent way across all of your solutions.

In the first part of this multi-part series of articles about creating connections in LINQPad to Dynamics 365 online, I went through the basic steps needed to create an OrganizationService connection in a LINQPad script.

Handling MFA connections to Dynamics 365
In the first part of this multi-part series of articles about creating connections in LINQPad to Dynamics 365 online, I went through the basic steps needed to create an OrganizationService connection in your LINQPad script.

LINQPad is an invaluable tool for .Net developers in general and as a Dynamics developer being able to test and execute code using the Dynamics365 API using LINQPad can be a real timesaver. In this multi-part series of articles, I will show you how to configure LINQPad so that creating connections to Dynamics365 can be done quickly and easily. Using the MyExtensions file, you’ll be able to create a shared method for every member of your team to be able to connect to any of your Dynamics environments by just typing a single line of code.

LINQPad’s Dump Containers can be used as a way of outputting some data to a static place within the output pane. A good example of this would be to display a timer or counter on the screen whilst a particular action is taking place.

LINQPad contains a number of very useful utilities, as documented here. One of these is the Util.ProgressBar functionality which allows you to display the progress of your script within the results pane. This can be very useful when, say, you are updating a large number of records and want an indication of progress without having to write additional information out to the results pane for every record or group of records. Whilst the use of the ProgressBar is very straightforward, I was caught out by a very simple detail when I first started using it, so thought it worth documenting in detail here.

When writing Unit tests one can focus on two different aspects of the code under test. We can call these two types of test ‘State-based’ and ‘Interaction-based’. The first of these concentrates on the end result achieved by the code under test – ie, what was the result of the code being run, whereas the second focuses on how that result was achieved.

While you can’t ordinarily log in as another user through the Dynamics CRM/365 front  end, as a System Administrator it is possible to impersonate another user when making calls to the CRM API.

This is very useful if you want to be able to do the following:

• Test the correct implementation of security roles.
• Check which records can be seen by which users if sharing is being used.
• Search for charts or views belonging to different users.
• Test the behaviour of plugins when executed by users wth different security roles.
  

LINQPad automatically makes available any snippets which are configured in Visual Studio. For example, if you type ‘cw’ (for Console.Writeline), LINQPad will inform you that it is aware of the snippet and prompt you to press Tab to insert the snippet at the cursor.

Whilst there is no built-in source control integration in LINQPad, it is still easy to keep your LINQPad scripts under source control. This means that scripts can easily be shared amongst your team and you can take full advantage of the benefits of source control, such as versioning and safe file storage in an external repository.