AIDE Studio for Visual Studio LightSwitch

AIDE is a set of productivity power tools for Cloud Business and LightSwitch applications. The only supported way to clone, import/export, local backup/restore screens and code. Visualize hard-to-access metadata to complement working with the standard LightSwitch designers.

UPDATE 3rd NOV 2016: MICROSOFT HAVE ANNOUNCED THAT VS2015 IS THE LAST VERSION CONTAINING LIGHTSWITCH. WE WILL BE RELEASING A FREE AIDE STUDIO TO THE COMMUNITY SOON! THE BUNDLE OFFERING WITH SCREEN TEMPLATES AND HTML THEMES WILL CONTINUE TO BE IMPROVED AND SUPPORTED THROUGH TO 2020.

The AIDE Exchange Hub is the focal point for a simple and fastscreen backup and restore. It automatically detects screen and code changes since the last backup. You cantrack individual screen changes in TFS when used in conjunction with AIDE (unique to VS2012). Transfer and Exchange screens with other team members or share with the community with theimport and export features. All the Exchange Hub features are unique to AIDE for LightSwitch.

The AIDE explorer and workbench windows present project metadata in intuitive views which assist you in locating project assets and shorten the time taken navigating around the IDE.

Features such as Clone/Copy screen and  Import/Export introduce advanced methods of working with LightSwitch projects that assist team development.

Designed and developed by LightSwitch Experts to be fully integrated into Visual Studio IDE for a seamless user experience. Visual Studio dockable windows and standard styling supporting Visual Studio light, dark and blue themes. Supports multiple projects in solutions and multiple instances of Visual Studio.

This blog post runs through a quick introduction: Installing Xpert360 Lightning AIDE Power Tools.

The product forum contains a wealth of other information including FAQ posts:Product Forum.

Main Functionality in version 2.0

• Import / Export screens
  • Exchange screens with colleagues and the community. Move screens between projects.
• Backup / Restore screens
  • With or without TFS you now have a simple and fast way to backup and restore individual screens and their code-behind files. Use in conjunction with Import for advanced workflows.
• Copy screen:
  • Ever wanted to copy a LightSwitch screen? AIDE provides a simple copy screen process from the Screen Workbench. No more starting over on each screen in your project.
• Export metadata
  • Copy project metadata via the clipboard to Excel and Word for quality assurance, documentation and analysis.
• LightSwitch Explorer:
  • Metadata views that surface related data for discovering and exploring project assets.Launch designers based on context.
• Screen Workbench:
  • Brings together all metadata for screen in one place with drill-down links to related assets and design windows.
• Entity Workbench:
  • Entity metadata all visible side by side in-situ. Links to designers easy navigation, QA and export to clipboard for documentation.

LightSwitch Explorer 

Getting the big picture can be difficult especially on medium to large LightSwitch Solutions. AIDE provides the following 'must have' functionality to make searching for properties a thing of the past.

 With LightSwitch Explorer you can :

• Examine all your screen, entity, project and solution metadata in one place.
• Sort, resize and re-order the output columns'
• Double-click to navigate to open screen, entity and code designers.
• Export metadata to the clipboard for further analysis in Excel or paste into Word for documenting your application.
• Summary views of data that are just not available in standard LightSwitch designers.

Figure: AIDE LightSwitch Explorer for many metadata views, export, navigation

Screen Workbench

Discovering and reviewing of screen assets is made easier with no need to navigate around multiple windows to access hard to find property information. The tabular views surface the properties of the screen items side-by-side for easy reviewing.

• All metadata for a screen's assets brought together in a single window.
• Navigate to related screens, entities, queries and code files.
• Clone existing screens so no need to start all over again.
• Properties, links, tap and navigation data in one place.
• Improved productivity through less necessity to manually traverse the IDE.

Figure: AIDE Screen Workbench for all screen metadata in one place

Entity Workbench

Discovering and reviewing of entity settings is made easier with all data visible at once without the need to navigate around multiple windows. The tabular views surface the properties of the entity properties side-by-side for easy reviewing.

• All metadata for a entity's assets brought together in a single window.
• Navigate to related screens, entities, queries and code files.
• Properties, relationships, screen dependencies in one place.
• Improved productivity through less necessity to manually traverse the IDE.

Figure: AIDE Entity Workbench - all metadata in one place

Exchange Hub

Unleash your LightSwitch team productivity with backup, restore, import and export of screens. Not available in standard LightSwitch designer, unique features in AIDE for LightSwitch. Discover new ways of working with LightSwitch. Surprise us with new real-world scenarios.

• Backup and restore screen metadata and code-behind files.
• Detects changes to screens and code since the last backup.
• Exchange screens between projects, team members, the community. 
• Compose LightSwitch applications from pre-built screens.
• Unleash your development productivity. 

Figure: AIDE Exchange Hub backup detects changes automatically

Release history

V2.1.24 New exception messages for activation failures

V2.1.23 Fixed VS Gallery issue so now directly downloadable

v2.1.20 Fixes for VS2013 Update 5 and VS2015 support

v2.1.07 Fixes for VS2013 Update 2

• Recovery from corrupt licensing and configurations files
• Clone screen now clones and refactors code-behind files
• Fixes for inconsistent metadata and partly loaded projects

v2.1.03 Support for March'14 Update

• Supports new LightSwitch projects v4.5
• Supports screen sub-folders

v2.1.01 Maintenance release - 2014-03-05 (limited release)

• Support for LightSwitch v4.5 projects
• Office Developer Tools March 2014 Update

v2.0.15 Maintenance release - 2014-02-27 (limited release)

• Fix for projects containing dot '.' in their name
• Fix for projects containing space ' ' in their name
• Fix for some navigation links (VS2013) 

v2.0.12 Maintenance release - 2014-01-10

• Fix to problem preventing import/export of some screens (VS2013)
• Fix to problem flagging pending changes after restoring some screens (VS2012/13)
• Fix incorrect import validation warnings for some navigation properties (VS2012 V2)

v2.0.10 Upgraded to support VS2013

v1.1.18 Upgraded to support VS2012 Update 3

v1.1.08 First release of Exchange Hub

v1.0.23 Upgraded to support VS2012 Update 2

Some features coming in version 2.2

• Great advanced HTML screen templates!
• Import and Export of entities and queries
• Update metadata properties lightning fast!
• Reporting enhancements
• More templates, less code.

More features in development

• Project Optimization and Analysis Workbench
• Localization Workbench
• And more...