XrmToolSuite.EnvironmentComparisonSuite 1.2026.7.10

⚖️ Environment Comparison Suite

An XrmToolBox plugin that compares a source and a target Dataverse environment across every component class, classifies each difference (Missing / Extra / Changed / Managed-vs-Unmanaged), rolls up a weighted difference score with severities, and exports the comparison report. Use it to validate a release, explain a support incident, and see exactly what drifted. Read-only: it never writes to either environment, and secret-typed values are masked everywhere.

Features

A component-category selector scopes a run: unselected classes are skipped and never retrieved. The diff engine is UI-free/SDK-free and unit-tested; the Dataverse collector is fail-soft per category (a query or permission gap degrades to an informational finding), pages via RetrieveAll, runs off the UI thread, and reports progress per category.

Exports

Run off the UI thread; masked values stay masked in every export.

Help & Support

A Help button (right of the toolbar) opens a Help & Support dialog with Documentation, Report an issue, and a support link, each opened via Process.Start. The tool implements IHelpPlugin and IGitHubPlugin, so XrmToolBox's own tool-menu links resolve to the same GitHub project (kkora/XrmToolSuite).

Build & install

This tool is not a single-DLL tool — it ships the Excel/PDF export dependency chain (the tool DLL plus its ClosedXML + PdfSharp/MigraDoc-GDI dependency DLLs, flat in the Plugins root, never a subfolder). The one-step build copies the whole chain for you:

dotnet build src\Tools\XrmToolSuite.EnvironmentComparisonSuite\XrmToolSuite.EnvironmentComparisonSuite.csproj -c Release -p:DeployToXTB=true

Then restart XrmToolBox and open Environment Comparison Suite. Full build/install/troubleshooting details are in ./DEPLOYMENT.md; the suite-wide guide (including why the export DLLs must sit in the Plugins root) is in ../../../Deployment_Guide_XrmToolBox.md.

Usage

1. Connect to your source environment as the primary connection.
2. Add the target environment via the dual-connection prompt (TargetOrganization) — the primary connection is not replaced.
3. Toggle the component categories you want to compare.
4. Run the comparison — both loads run off the UI thread with progress and cancellation.
5. Filter the difference grid, inspect changes in the side-by-side viewer, review the recommendations, then Export (Excel/PDF/JSON/HTML).

Notes & limitations

• Read-only — the tool never writes to either environment.
• Secret-typed environment-variable values are masked in the grid, the detail viewer, and every export; a value change is still detected via the masked placeholder.
• The target uses the suite dual-connection pattern (RaiseRequestConnectionEvent with actionName="TargetOrganization", handled in UpdateConnection without replacing the primary).
• Large FormXML/LayoutXML/web-resource content is compared by content hash, so a definition change is detected without storing or exporting the payload.