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What I'm trying to do is duplicate some functionality found in a program
called ACT http://www.act.com/
ACT is a contact management tool that has a shared calendar and a list of
contacts.
It uses Outlook as it's MAPI provider.
Basically you can see your list of contacts, and highlight one, then go up
to the menu and choose to send that contact an email, or a letter, a memo
etc. When you make your choice, it opens the appropriate type of form... be
it a Word doc or email etc. You can build templates... so that the name and
address fields get populated based on the contact you had highlighted when
you started. Kinda like a one-shot mail merge. For instance a word doc opens
with a letterhead and it is populated and ready to print after you type your
letter. Client also has a template for fax, memo etc. It maintains a history
of what you have sent to a given contact, for instance if I sent you a Word
doc, I could see it in the history and double click on it to open it and see
what it was I sent you. I see similar functionality in the Activities tab
and journaling functionality in Outlook.
I'm wondering if any of this kind of stuff may be showing up now in Outlook
2003...
ACT is somewhat of a dog program in my opinion. Unstable and still uses a
..dbf database. Ever hear of SQL lol?
I am thinking about building some stuff that will allow us to:
Highlight a contact in Outlook's contact list.
Right click and see these same options in the context menu. (Send email,
letter, memo, fax etc.)
I've gotten as far as adding an .oft to the list of templates in the "User
templates in file system". As I understand, Outlook has certain classes of
forms it wants to work with. What I'm wondering is if we could have Outlook
open a Word doc (from within Outlook) and populate the fields based on the
info in the contact item. Or would Outlook not be able to deal with it since
it is not an Outlook message class item?
I've also been fiddling with customizing the contact form itself... was able
to publish the form into my local install of Outlook so it's not a "One-off"
etc... so I've been working with it for a while. I started back in August...
client did not realize how much time it would take and decided to just cut
and upgrade to a newer version of ACT but they are still not happy with it
so I am working on trying to get this functionality into Outlook and then I
might be able to justify setting them up with Exchange so we'd have the
shared calendar and contacts.
I've done a little VBA . I am thinking VBA might do it but there may be an
easier way or third-party stuff that will do this. (Or maybe OL 2003?)
Also researched into the way Outlook associates contacts... as I understand
it uses a "Links collection" that is based on the contact item being linked
to all the other items associated with a given contact.
Client really likes being able to:
1) Open a contact
2) See the other contacts that he has associated with that contact down in
the lower left corner.
3) Click on another contact in that list of associated contacts.
4) Rinse and repeat.
He'd like to be able to do this with categories as well, but since the Links
collection is based on contact only, I can't see how to fetch category
associations without iterating through all the contacts looking for the
specific category in question.
Anyone know if Outlook 2003 is using the same type of links collection
system?
Also wondering how much of this work would need to be duplicated if we
decide to upgrade to Outlook 2003.
called ACT http://www.act.com/
ACT is a contact management tool that has a shared calendar and a list of
contacts.
It uses Outlook as it's MAPI provider.
Basically you can see your list of contacts, and highlight one, then go up
to the menu and choose to send that contact an email, or a letter, a memo
etc. When you make your choice, it opens the appropriate type of form... be
it a Word doc or email etc. You can build templates... so that the name and
address fields get populated based on the contact you had highlighted when
you started. Kinda like a one-shot mail merge. For instance a word doc opens
with a letterhead and it is populated and ready to print after you type your
letter. Client also has a template for fax, memo etc. It maintains a history
of what you have sent to a given contact, for instance if I sent you a Word
doc, I could see it in the history and double click on it to open it and see
what it was I sent you. I see similar functionality in the Activities tab
and journaling functionality in Outlook.
I'm wondering if any of this kind of stuff may be showing up now in Outlook
2003...
ACT is somewhat of a dog program in my opinion. Unstable and still uses a
..dbf database. Ever hear of SQL lol?
I am thinking about building some stuff that will allow us to:
Highlight a contact in Outlook's contact list.
Right click and see these same options in the context menu. (Send email,
letter, memo, fax etc.)
I've gotten as far as adding an .oft to the list of templates in the "User
templates in file system". As I understand, Outlook has certain classes of
forms it wants to work with. What I'm wondering is if we could have Outlook
open a Word doc (from within Outlook) and populate the fields based on the
info in the contact item. Or would Outlook not be able to deal with it since
it is not an Outlook message class item?
I've also been fiddling with customizing the contact form itself... was able
to publish the form into my local install of Outlook so it's not a "One-off"
etc... so I've been working with it for a while. I started back in August...
client did not realize how much time it would take and decided to just cut
and upgrade to a newer version of ACT but they are still not happy with it
so I am working on trying to get this functionality into Outlook and then I
might be able to justify setting them up with Exchange so we'd have the
shared calendar and contacts.
I've done a little VBA . I am thinking VBA might do it but there may be an
easier way or third-party stuff that will do this. (Or maybe OL 2003?)
Also researched into the way Outlook associates contacts... as I understand
it uses a "Links collection" that is based on the contact item being linked
to all the other items associated with a given contact.
Client really likes being able to:
1) Open a contact
2) See the other contacts that he has associated with that contact down in
the lower left corner.
3) Click on another contact in that list of associated contacts.
4) Rinse and repeat.
He'd like to be able to do this with categories as well, but since the Links
collection is based on contact only, I can't see how to fetch category
associations without iterating through all the contacts looking for the
specific category in question.
Anyone know if Outlook 2003 is using the same type of links collection
system?
Also wondering how much of this work would need to be duplicated if we
decide to upgrade to Outlook 2003.