Streamlining Dynamics365 Environment Setup with Powershell and CHOCOLATEY

In order to develop something for Dynamics365 i had to install a few extra things in my development environment to make working easier. As i work on a few different projects and for different versions within some projects a need to set up new environments quite often. To save some time i wrote a powershell script that installs some things. I am going to show what i use for my day-to-day work and how i automated its installation.

Here is what i install:

• choco: Commandline installer to install software from chocolatey.org. Its comparable to „apt-get“ but for Windows. I use this to install most of the following tools.
• 7Zip: Archiving tool that can work with many archive formats. For distribution of large files or backups i like to 7z and split into separate files.
• Notepad++: Better notepad with many Plugins. This with the plugin „xmltools“ works good for configuring and comparing config files.
• sqlpackage: Standalone tool for importing of bacpac or bak files on the command line
• microsoftazurestorageexplorer: I Azure StorageAccounts to distribute large files or databases and with the MicrosoftAzureStorageExplorer i can access the storage accounts with a UI without having to go trough powershell commands or the limited options of the azure portal
• vscode: Small lightweight IDE with lots of addins. I use this for working with azure resource manager templates and logicapps and many things from the power platform.
• nuget.commandline (and nuget-credentialprovider-vss): I install nuget as commandline tool because i use it to push or pull nuget packages to azure devops instances
• Powershell modules „d365fo.tools“ and „d365fo.integrations“: I use this to make managing my envirionment a bit easier

Now the powershell code to install all of this:

iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

choco install 7zip -y
choco install notepadplusplus -y
choco install sqlpackage -y
choco install microsoftazurestorageexplorer -y
choco install vscode -y
choco install nuget.commandline -y
choco install nuget-credentialprovider-vss -y

Write-Host "Installing nuget packageprovider"
Install-PackageProvider -Name NuGet -MinimumVersion 2.8.5.201 -Force
Write-Host "Installing d365fo.tools"
install-module d365fo.tools -force -allowclobber
Write-Host "Installing d365fo.integrations"
install-module d365fo.integrations -force -allowclobber