Outlook admin vs individual access (VBA pulling info)

[ker_01]

I'm not looking for a specific solution, just information on whether or not
this is possible, and if so, some general leads on what I'd need to learn
more about in order to develop and implement.

I have a VBA macro that grabs appointment data
(time/date/duration/subject/etc). As an individual user, it only pulls this
information from my calendar.

We are considering a project where employees would start using custom labels
to document their time on different projects, and ideally we would be able to
pull all of that data at once (not require each user to pull their own
summary data). In my mind, that means someone with some level of IT
administrative access who can access all calendars to pull this data - even
if the individual users have not specifically shared their calendars.

Has anyone pulled data at this aggregate level before, and if so, what are
the major stumbling blocks I should look out for, and what would I need to
learn more about to adapt VBA code from use at an individual level up to
something usable by an IT administrator to pull all calendars?

Thank you,
Keith

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

You don't say what version or versions of Outlook you intend to support, or
if you have Exchange or not.

In Outlook 2007 or later calendar labels have been deprecated from the UI in
standard appointment forms. Labels never were exposed in the Outlook object
model, although they are accessible using other API's. So you'd need a
custom form to show a label in a drop-down or other control.

If you have Exchange you can have code that accesses each mailbox and reads
the desired data. If you don't have Exchange you should not even think about
something like this, you need to start looking at other ideas. PST files
aren't designed to be shared, nor should they ever be accessed from a
network share or anything other than a local hard drive.

I've aggregated such data many times, but never using VBA code. VBA code is
not designed to be deployed it's for prototyping and for personal macros. I
would probably use either C# or VB.NET for this, although something like VB6
could be used if you don't need 64 bit code for Exchange 2010.

How the data would be accessed, even with Exchange, depends on Exchange
version. It could be using Extended MAPI, Redemption
(www.dimastr.com/redemption), WebDAV with DASL or EWS (Exchange Web
services) depending on Exchange version and your familiarity with the
various API's.