Developing and Testing Plug-ins in Dynamics 365 - Part 4 - Debugging with the Plugin Profiler

If we were using a on-premises instances and had access to the Dynamics 365 server then we would be able to have a remote debugger running on the server and step through the plug-in code at our leisure. However, Microsoft is quite keen to move everybody on to the cloud thus we need another way. Enter Plugin profiler.

The plugin profiler is solution that can be installed on any Dynamics 365 instance and can be used to generate plug-in traces that can then be used to step through the plug-in code.

The key difference is that the stepping through the code is done after the plug-in has run and not in real time. In short, the sequence is as follows:

1. Trigger Plug-in (e.g. create account ...)
2. Save Plug-in trace
3. Load Plug-in trace with Plugin Registration Tool
4. Step Through plug-in code.

Pre-Requisites

• Plugin Registration Tool installed (see this post for more details)
• Admin access to Dynamics 365 instance
• Visual Studio 2017

Debugging Online Plug-ins

1. Start Plugin Registration Tool
2. Click Install Profiler
3. Select the step to be profiled
4. Click Start Profiling



5. Go with the defaults



6. Invoke Step (Create account in this case)
7. On Visual Studio, Click Debug | Attach To Process | PluginRegistrationTool.exe



8. Click Debug



9. Select Assembly Location and Relevant Plugin
10. Click on Highlighted arrow and select profile



11. Place a break point on Visual Studio
12. Click Start Execution
13. The break point will be hit and we can step through the code at our leisure