how do I communicate between a vb .net plugin and a standalone app?

[Scott Emick]

I'm looking to make an outoook plug in that sends the body of an email
message, along with subject, to, from, sent, etc to a contact manager app
that I have written.

What would be the best way to send this data over to my other app?

Thanks,
Scott

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Be more specific. What type of data does your app take? Do you want to write
the information to a CSV file, a TSV file, an XML file, a database
recordset, the registry, an INI file? There are lots of possibilities. Can
your app be automated (can it expose a DLL or OCX you can automate)?

 

[Scott Emick]

Hi Ken,

My current app is writing info to a mysql database. I would just like
to get the data over to the app to plug into the form where a user enters
contact information from the email along with the text from the body of the
email. I could expose a DLL and create methods to do this, I am just not
totally sure how to reach out from the DLL that would be runnning inside
outlook as a plugin to the exe that is running (the app), or to the dll that
I have referenced which exposes those methods.

I have read a bit about dot net remoting, but I have not experimented with
it yet.

Scott

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

I know nothing about dotnet remoting.

If you want your external app to be able to receive data from Outlook then
you need to expose methods in it that you can call from the Outlook DLL
(exposing an automation interface) or do something like writing a file to a
known location and having your code check that at intervals. Then if the
file is there you read it and delete it. Maybe something like an XML file
containing Outlook data.

It all depends on how you architect your CRM app.

Why not just let the Outlook DLL connect to the MySQL database on its own
and insert or update rows using ADO or ADO.NET?

 

[Scott Emick]

Maybe that is a great idea, I will package my entry form into a dll plug-in
for outlook and try that. Maybe I may put the whole CRM app inside outlook.

Thanks very much Ken,

Scott