IEDevToolbar, IE7 and Microsoft CRM

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Ok this is frustrating. This is my third attempt to write this post and hopefully IE doesn't crash on me this time. So here is my last attempt for tonight.

You all know that I am not a developer and that you normally do not see developer related posts on my blog. Well this might change in the future! Today I had some emails going back and forth with a partner that just started with Microsoft CRM. The emailthread was about the Internet Explorer Toolbar, IE7 and Microsoft CRM.

To make this combination work and save you some research, please take a look below and follow the steps:

  1. Download and install the Internet Explorer Toolbar Beta 3 here: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&DisplayLang=en
  2. After installation open up Internet Explorer and right click next to a tab and choose "Unlock the toolbars"
  3. The next step is clicking on "Tools" on the righttop of your IE window, select "Toolbars" / " Explorer bar" / "IE DOM Explorer"
  4. Type in the address of your Microsoft CRM Server but type it like this: https://yourservername:portnumber/loader.aspx
  5. You might need a reboot when the IE DOM Explorer toolbar doesn't show up, repeat step 3 and 4 after reboot. (I had to do this on my workstation).
  6. To make the IE DOM Explorer work with the popup windows like accountdetails or contactdetails you need to modify the default settings in IE to open popup windows in new tabs, so you’ll end up with a tabbed interface for all MSCRM windows.

Why do I need this you might wonder? Well, take a look at these posts from fellow bloggers Simon Hutson and Ben Vollmer and explore what you could do with this: https://blogs.msdn.com/ukcrm/archive/2005/12/25/507343.aspx and https://blogs.msdn.com/midatlanticcrm/archive/2006/01/02/Dynamically-Showing-or-Hiding-Tabs-in-Microsoft-CRM-3.aspx What Ben and Simon blogged about is officially "unsupported". The examples were based on IE6 and thats where my steps come in handy to still follow their examples using IE7 and the IEDevtoolbar!