Standard Developer Tooling

Developers working with Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform should use a standard set of tools to ensure consistent development practices across DfE. These tools support solution development, source control, plugin coding and application lifecycle management.

Core Tools

Visual Studio Code

Used for inspecting solution files, working with Power Platform CLI, and editing configuration assets such as JSON files, web resources and environment settings.

Visual Studio (2022 or later)

Required for developing and debugging C# plugins, custom workflow activities and other pro‑code components. Includes support for solution‑aware build processes and NuGet package management.

Requires an appropriate Visual Studio licence

Power Platform CLI (PAC CLI)

Command‑line tooling for exporting/importing solutions, managing environment connections, working with Power Pages, and interacting with Dataverse. This is the primary tool for solution extraction into source control.

Azure DevOps

Used for source control, pull requests, work item tracking and running ALM pipelines that build and deploy managed solutions across environments.

Requires an Azure DevOps licence, assigned through DfE’s standard access request process

Plugin Registration Tool

Used for registering plugin steps during development (not in higher environments). Typically accessed via the Power Platform Tools extension.

XrmToolBox

Optional but widely used for specialist tasks such as metadata exploration, data transporter, plugin trace viewing and bulk record management.

Notepad++

A quick and easy editor available for quick edits, viewing extracted solution files or checking configuration files without loading a full IDE.

Postman

Useful for testing API requests, Dataverse Web API calls, custom connectors and integrations during development.