Requirements

Visual Studio 2017
CRM SDK
7Zip
Notepad (or similar application)

Introduction

When setting up my development environment I wanted the ability to use the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Developer Toolkit in the latest version of Visual Studio 2017. This extension allows the ability to deploy plugins and workflow code directly from Visual Studio - which is a huge time saver for Dynamics 365 development.

Problem

The only problem is that it officially supports Visual Studio 2015 only. I thought I was out of luck with Visual Studio 2017 and I would have to use an older version of visual studio if I wanted to use this extension.

Solution

After doing some digging, I found a resource that showed that it is possible to run this extension on Visual Studio 2017 with some tweaking.

This guide builds off of this one. I ran into issues with the source tutorial since it was a little vague. I wasted some time going in the wrong direction on getting this installed so hopefully my guide helps eliminate that wasted time!

Guide

Go to this page:
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DynamicsCRMPG.MicrosoftDynamicsCRMDeveloperToolkit
Download extension ‘Microsoft Dynamics 365 Developer Toolkit’
Go to your downloads folder
Right-Click and go to 7-Zip and then click ‘Open Archive’
Go to the file extension.vsix.manifest and right click. Then, click Edit
Change 14 to 15 for the version and save the file
You will see a pop-up in 7zip saying that a file was modified. Hit ‘Ok’
Go back to the download folder, hit right click on the file and select Open With...
Select Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector
Wait for the VSIX Installer window to appear. This might take a few seconds to pop up.
Select Visual Studio Professional 2017 on this screen. Click Install.
It should now install this extension on Visual Studio 2017
To confirm that it has been installed, open up Visual Studio 2017 and in the top right bar select File > New > Project
Dynamics 365 should be showing under Visual C# in the popup window, confirming that it has been downloaded successfully.
On the toolbar, select Tools > Options...
Scroll down on the left hand side of the screen until you see ‘Dynamics 365 Developer Toolkit’. Expand this section.
Select Tool Paths and then provide the location to the Plug-In Registration Tool and CRM Sdk Bin Directory