Linking Tasks to Appointments...

[Jed]

Outlook Version: 2003

Hello,

I have a collection of tasks I'm assigning to a collection of appointments,
each task can be assigned to one or more appointment items depending on work
required, and I'm looking for the best practice for uniquely identifying
these records.

My concern is that I've read the ID's can be changed and MS recommends we
not program against the ID's if we can avoid it. So how is this handled? I'm
assuming nobody loops through all the appointments in a range looking for
attached tasks matching property parameters. So is it common to create a
property and assign my particular IDs to the propery and track them in some
external DB, or what???

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or ideas you may have.

 

[Eric Legault [MVP - Outlook]]

You're on the right track. I'd store your own unique identifier in a custom
field, UserProperty1-4, or the BillingInformation field (that's kind of a
secret storage property).

You may want to consider adding the Tasks as direct or linked attachments to
the appointment as well.

 

[Jed]

Eric,

Thank you.

Regarding your idea,

EL: You may want to consider adding the Tasks as direct or linked
attachments to
the appointment as well.

How do you handle the linking, instead of direct embedding? Are updates to
the original task reflected in all the objects upon save, or do I have to
recreate and reattach these links each time the original task is updated?

Thanks again.

 

[Eric Legault [MVP - Outlook]]

Linking is handled by the Attachments.Add method, using the olByReference
enum as the type parameter. They are links, not copies, so you don't have to
worry about object state.