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Workbench is down today due to an expired SSL Certificate. I have become so dependent on using Workbench to retrieve the Metadata API names to include in my Migration Tool's xml package manifest that I don't have a good alternative.

Any recommendations for a different tool with a GUI to describeMetadata and get the component names for a Migration Tool package manifest? E.g. <members>unfiled$public/NewCustomer</members>

I would rather not download Eclipse and the Force.com IDE just for this purpose.

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    Honestly, it's worth taking the five to ten minutes to install the ant toolkit. I use it all the time. Once you set up the files, which is arguably the hardest part, you can create "packages" that are easy to download and upload, and automatically build dependencies for you. – sfdcfox Aug 15 '17 at 21:28
  • This is on my list (which is becoming more of a bucket list / pipe dream). I keep tabling that while feature requests / bug reports continue to poor in from the business side of things. Think it's even worth it with DX on the rise? – Bow-chicawow-ers Aug 16 '17 at 0:19
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    You could sign up for Heroku, then deploy workbench into that and then run workbench. It took me 20 minutes earlier today. lekkimworld.com/2017/06/22/… – Dan Wooding Aug 16 '17 at 3:35
  • Thanks for the link, @Dan. I'll try that out, esp. since it's a good idea to host our org's own Workbench instance for security purposes anyhow. – Bow-chicawow-ers Aug 16 '17 at 4:42
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I've got some rough metadata tooling in the FuseIT SFDC Explorer (Disclaimer: A free tool distributed via my current employer). It's windows only at this stage.

I say rough because this particular area isn't at all refined or intuitive. Building it out stalled in favor of other areas that Workbench didn't already support.

From the Metadata Retrieve tab you can select the Metadata type of interest. E.g. ApexClass. Then press the "Get Package Component Type" button and it will dump out all the component names of that type.

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Let me know if this sort of thing appeals and I could put some effort into it to make it more useful.

Update: So, umm, this particular feature is broken in the current public release this feature works perfectly well in the current 3.20.* releases. I'll try and get a release out for it soon. I'm aware of the irony considering the current situation with Workbench :)

You might also have some luck with the Salesforce DX CLI. You can use it to retrieve the package metadata. You might need to create a custom extension based on jsForce to get fine grained access to the component names.

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  • This is great that your employer has offered it up to the community. Will keep it bookmarked; if you remember, would be great to be alerted on here when the Metadata Retrieve fix is released. Also curious to check out the features that Workbench doesn't offer – Bow-chicawow-ers Aug 16 '17 at 0:14
  • Can we retrieve lwc components also via that tool – Monalisa Das Jan 17 '20 at 6:03
  • @MonalisaDas Yes, it works for lwc. Set the second drop down to the LightningComponentBundle metadata type. Then press "Retrieve Unpackaged" and it will pull the source for all the components in the org. – Daniel Ballinger Jan 20 '20 at 22:48

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