Not exactly sure what I'm answering...
You have to set the cRIO to send back the information you want, and you need to use a dashboard project to retrieve the sent data. You can either edit the dashboard datatype.ctl, which seems to be common, or you can use your own structure by using the "set user data.vi". A good example on how to pack the information for user data can be found in 1629's code at
http://beta.gearsinc.org/beta_2008-10-29/. Essentially, it takes something in, turns it into a string, turns the string into a byte array, and you're good to go. Unpacking should be the exact reverse.
You
can run the dashboard at the same time as having code for the robot deployed from your computer, but I suggest build/deploy (set as startup) if you have a stable version right now.
Edit: Once you have your robot code running, just open your dashboard project and deploy. It should deploy to your computer, so it shouldn't mess with the running robot code. All it does is read udp packets and process them as far as I know