UPDATE: Dynamics SL 2018, CU3 (and later CUs) include an msi named “SDKSetupVS2017.msi” that is the official SDK when working with Visual Studio 2017 and 2019. This post remains helpful if you have a prior CU installed and cannot install the latest CU for some reason…

Solomon Cloud Solutions published a very similarly named post back in 2016. The post works for our purposes with a few modifications and one caveat. The bolded lines from that post are included in the extension.vsixmanifest file in the SL SDK for 2018. To update it for Visual Studio 2017, just copy the bolded lines from that post and paste them immediately below, changing “14.0” to “15.0”, so it looks like this (with the new lines in bold):

<VisualStudio Version=”14.0″>
<Edition>Pro</Edition>
<Edition>Premium</Edition>
<Edition>Ultimate</Edition>
</VisualStudio>
<VisualStudio Version=”15.0″>
  <Edition>Pro</Edition>
  <Edition>Premium</Edition>
  <Edition>Ultimate</Edition>
</VisualStudio>

The rest of the instructions work the same. Be sure to zip the files so the extension.vsixmanifest file is at the root of the .zip file before changing the extension to .vsix.

When running both vsix files I saw a warning message that the format was not compatible with Visual Studio 2017, but the DynamicsSL project appeared under Visual Basic projects with the correct icon. I was able to create, compile, and launch new projects without any errors. The Microsoft Dynamics SL SDK controls appeared in the Toolbox once I had Form1 open in the designer and I was able to add them to the design surface.

The hyperlink to the warning message describes the steps necessary to eliminate it if you or your company requires that. That’s the caveat.