Contacts: Activities (Shared folders/Multiple mailboxes)

[Lou Zher]

Hello,
We are running into an issue with how activities works and are wondering if
there are any workarounds for this.

What we want is activities that span across the user's own mailbox AND any
shared-in folders that user has. Activities needs to also work from a
shared-in contact folder.

Here's the scenario:
Let's say we have two users, R and A.
R has a contact folder with clients in it. R shares it out so A can share it
in.
R also shares out his calendar, tasks and journal.

A needs to be able to pull up contacts from R's contact folder, click the
activities tab and see anything related to that client from her own mailbox
as well as R's calendar, journal and task list.

This apparently can't be made to work. I'm hoping someone here can tell me
how to do this. Also, A cannot mail-merge R's clients.

In the meantime, we've set up exchange to allow R access to A's mailbox and
vise-versa and set up the profiles for this.
Now A can see everything R has, but we cannot restrict this at the folder
level. This might be workable, but is less than ideal. Also, now the
activities tab works but I cannot make a single activities view that let's A
see everything related to a client across both mailboxes. Is there a way to
do this?

We are using Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003 via RPC over HTTP, although our
experimentation has generally been the standard MAPI connect.

-LZ

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Such activities groups are simply not possible. You might want to look at
more robust contact management systems that use Outlook and Exchange. See
http://www.slipstick.com/addins/contact_management.htm

However, A can mail merge R's clients by using Outlook's Tools | Mail Merge
command.

 

[Lou Zher]

Sue,
When I mentioned the mail merge issue, I was refering to mail merging from a
shared-in folder. That doesn't work, or at least, it doesn't work here...
the option is grayed. It does work in the multiple mailbox scenario though,
but there I couldn't do folder level permissions. Thanks for your speedy
response. BTW: Love the book. Yours and Rizzo's are the ones that always
seem to be open on my desk lately.
Thanks again,
-LZ

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Are you looking at the Tools menu in the Outlook contacts folder? I don't
know what you mean by a shared-in folder.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Lou Zher]

Sue,
Hmm... I just tried it and that works. Strange, I could have sworn that
wasn't working before. Perhaps that was on our test box that only had
Outlook installed on it. Probably my bad. BTW: When I referred to a
shared-in folder, that was just a shared folder. I been making the
distinction at work between a folder that has had the permissions set to
allow sharing via "Share my contacts" (shared-out) vs. the other side of it,
the folder the user sees after they select "Open Shared Contacts..."
(shared-in).

Anyway, getting back to the original problem, I'm looking for a way to show
activities across mailboxes or by looking in shared folders. I'm now
convinced that Outlook can't inherently do that, but suppose for a moment
that your captain said "make it so." Where would you start looking for a way
around this limitation?

I looked at the slipstick page you referenced, but I didn't really see
anything in there that would solve the problem without bringing in its own
issues. I really need to stay within the Outlook UI.

I've so far considered these possibilities:
* Set up a dummy mailbox and set up some sort of synchronization that copies
everything from both boxes and merges them into this one and have the
activities thingy search in there, although that means when they double
click entries and mod it, I would need to get it back to the original
location, so the sync would have to be two-way. (ExOLEDB event sinks
perhaps)
MBX/A <--sync--> MBX/dummy/a-folder
MBX/R <--sync--> MBX/dummy/r-folder

* Do the dummy mailbox idea but somehow do a double-reference (kinda like LN
in Linux does for files) where both the normal mailbox and the dummy one
point to the same stuff. I'd be scared of this because while it might be
possible, it might be something ESEUTIL /G would call corrupt -- just like
you can double reference file data in on FAT disks by hacking the starting
cluster, but CHKDSK balks and calls them crosslinked.
MBX/dummy/a-folder = pointer to MBX/A
MBX/dummy/r-folder = pointer to MBX/R

* Write a custom form that mimics activities. That sounds like a lotta work
and I'm not even sure it could be done, or done well.
* Write a web page that they can jump to that runs that search, although
then I've broken out of the Outlook UI and lost a lot of the features of
that.
* Make a custom form page that basically has two of those activities
controls side-by-side and searching in the two mailboxes (although it won't
always be just two and it still doesn't give me a merged view that I can
sort and all that fun stuff. I'm not sure this is even possible anyway.)

Is there some other possibility I'm not considering here? Which way sounds
best? Know any hot-shot consultant that can make this happen for us? (we're
in St. Louis).

Thanks for all your help so far. I really appreciate your involvement in
this group.
-LZ

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

A single activities group cannot show activities across mailboxes or public
folders. It can show only activities in a single mailbox or in a .pst file.
Outlook simply is not designed as a robust group contact management tool.
Additional workarounds besides the ones you have already thought of are
suggested at http://www.slipstick.com/journal/pubjournal.htm .

As a consultant, I'd recommend using an existing contact management product
that works within the Outlook UI. The cost of developing and testing your
own solution could be high.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers