If you are like me, the acronym "SDK" scares you (not that I would ever share that with my development-type teammates). I am a run-of-the-mill CRM customizer – do I really need or want to know all the nitty-gritty details of end points, soap vs. rest, and assemblies? Not really, but there is much more to the Dynamics CRM SDK than development tips/tools/examples. My current favorite is the Data Migration Utility.
The Data Migration Utility allows you to export data from specific entities and then import that data into another environment. Why is this important? It means that lists or supporting data will have the same GUID in each environment. If you have jscript or a real-time workflow that populates fields as defaults, you can use the same GUID in each environment!
In the SDK 6.1 this can be found in SDKToolsConfigurationMigrationDataMigrationUtility.exe
In three easy steps, you can create a schema file, export data and then import the data into your new target environment. Choosing Continue will require you to log in. If your login has access to more than one org, check the "Display list of available organizations" box.
Choose a solution (optional) and select the entity you want to migrate. The schema file defines what fields will be exported – if you only want to export a few of the fields, you only select those.
Note that you can do many entities in one file. Choose Save and Export, and save your file.
You will be presented with the following, to take you to the next step.
Define the file name for the data by clicking '...' Then choose Export Data.
Finally, import the data into the target instance. Note that you will be prompted to log in again when choosing Import from the main menu.
Find the zip file created from the export and choose Import Data.
The screen will keep you updated on the progress. When it's finished, check out your new data.
So go ahead ― download the SDK 6.1 today, and see how you can use it to make your work life a bit more efficient.
Read more at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309408.aspx
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