Guidance

[BigDubb]

Yesterday I was approached by our training department to implement a new
methodology regarding meetings. They would like the Appointment form
modified to support additional information:
- Assign users (attendees) to roles, selectable from a Combobox.
- Choose a specific type of Meeting and have that drive the category of the
appointment.
- Select multiple outcomes for a meeting
- A grid of topics, facilitators and time allocated to those topics
- Indicator of any additional items to bring

Initially I went down the thought of a simple modification to the
appointment form, creating my own fields etc. in a newly defined region on
the form. I encountered some problems here as I am not able to trap on
events, i.e. Recipients.Changed cannot be listened to by another object to
update the combo box for role assignment. Secondly, I can't modify the
default layout at all to facilitate the new controls.

After digging a little further I came across this example,
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb226710.aspx but have some other
concerns, i.e. it's built on VS2005. shouldn't this be built using VS2008. It
does provide the full functionality we are hoping to exploit, i.e. adding a
new pane on the side for information, and some ribbon controls etc. But
the further I dive into this time considerations are becoming a greater
concern.

So, this all being said, does anyone have any recommendations on a best
approach, that has the highest likelihood of completion by Friday. I think I
may be able to get the latter to work, but the implementation, and
referencing of custom fields on an appointment have me concerned.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

That sample predates the release of VS2008. If you look at the form region
and task pane functionality in VS2008, you'll see it's much easier to
implement than what's in this sample, although the sample's concepts are very
good. Links to some other VS2008 form region samples and walkthroughs at
http://www.outlookcode.com/news.aspx?id=22.

Getting all that done by Friday, though, seems rather rushed, but you should
be able to get a fair amount of proof-of-concept work accomplished. Do keep
in mind that the methodology involves building an add-in and deploying it to
all users.

FWIW, I definitely would not try to do all that on a traditional Outlook
form.

 

[BigDubb]

Sue,

thanks for your response. I feel like I'm on the right path now, this feels
much more doable.

I am hitting an issue during while trying to test the addin. Regardless of
the addin type (separate, adjacent) it doesn't show on any outlook item I
include this on. Is there some security setting I need to be aware of to
allow the addin to be displayed in out look.

Secondly, there isn't much information about how one goes about deploying.
Is click once an option for deployment? Will this build all of the necessary
files to register the new region with user accounts etc?

Thanks again for all your help. I can get the lion's shre of this to work
without having it plugged into outlook initially. I look forward to your
response.

Matt

 

[BigDubb]

nm I figured it out. I had an existing session of Outlook open which was
making things add a little flakey.
Regions were persisted, so the registry needed to be cleaned.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Microsoft's web site has tons of information. on both ClickOnce and .msi
deployments. I've posted the main links at
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?ID=42. If you run into deployment
problems, post details in the VSTO forum at
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vsto/threads/