Is there a way to import an ERD file that has been generated from XRMToolBox for MS Dynamics?

I am attempting to document an instance of the MS Dynamics 365, and have been able to get in and get the a view of the ERD using a XRMToolBox for MS Dynamics plugin.

However, I now have data I want to add to my Visual Paradigm DIagrams but can’t work out hoe to import it.
I have searched and haven’t even been able to find an application that I can open the ERD file.

Does anyone have any suggestions or thoughts on how to achieve this without manually building all the entities?

Any ideas?

It’s hard to comment on this because it heavily depends on the kind of data file which you managed to produce. So: what does it contain? Can it be opened by an editor such as notepad (which would be the case if it uses an XML format)?

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

Unless you are well versed in Dynamics 365, i doubt that my issue will have ever surfaced.
The ERD file (*.ERD) is produced by a specific D365 utility tool and so far I have not been able to locate any other product that can use this file meaningfully.

If opened with notepad, for example, it is unreadable.

I guess I am seeking to find out if anyone else out there has attempted to document Microsoft Dynamics 365 structures using Visual Paradigm.

Thanks

The main problem is that an “ERD file” (the erd extension) doesn’t really tell us much useful about the file format. I looked up the XRM toolbox as well as its software repository and that brings me to another question: which plugins (extensions) are you using that allow you to save ERD files?

Note that I don’t have experience with MS Dynamics but I am trying to get enough information which might help to find a solution…

Correct me if I’m wrong please: if I understand correctly you use the XrmToolbox to connect to your Dynamics 365 environment (which is hosted in the cloud) and you then extract data from it. You use a plugin for XrmToolbox which can visualize this data as an ERD diagram, which you then save as an .erd file.

As such my question: what plugin? Would that be Chart manager by any chance?

Because that would be something that some of us might be able to use. I already checked out their GitHub repository, discovered that it was (most likely) set up with Visual Studio (I conclude as much from a so called “solution file” (*.sln) which I found) but I get tons of errors because I’m missing SDK’s (development kits; in order to program against a program you need an API of some sort to work with).

So I fired up VS Code instead and I think I already discovered the routine which loads / imports the data:

No promises, and definitely no guarantees, but this might give us a clue about the file format. And once you know the file format then you have a much better chance of determining if the data can be imported or converted somehow.

1 Like

WOW. - You have gone to a lot of effort - Thanks.

The XRMToolBox plugin is actually called “Entity Relationship Diagram”