Help: I need advice on a problem tracking system

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G

Guest

Here is a real-life scenario. We have an Outlook folder that stores mail
messages. Each message represents an issue request. Our team members opens
each unread item and act on it. My manager wants to know the following
metrics:
1. The time the message was received (easy)
2. The time the message was first read
3. and the time when the issue is resolved

Based on the above metrics, he wants to calculate the following:
4. How long does it take before the message is read (subtract metric 1 from
metric 2)
5. How long does it take to resolve the issue (subtract metric 2 from metric
3)


The first metric is easy: it is the received time of the message. I have no
clue how to obtain the second metric.

For the third metric, I created a rule to automatically flag each message as
it arrives, then when a teammemer resolved the issue, he or she clear the
flag as an indication. Because clearing the flag modifies the message, I can
use the "modified" attribute for this purpose. This method is not foolproof,
however. If the user reply to the message, for example, the "modified"
attribute is update once again and render my method useless.

I need your help to:
a) obtain metric #2 and #3
b) periodically, export the three metrics to either Excel or Access in order
to calculate metrics #4 and #5, along with other statistics such as average,
mean, min, max, ...

Any help, idea, suggestion, even incomplete ones are welcome and
appreciated. Thank you.

Hai
 
To answer my own question: I created a couple of custom (user defined)
properties and use VBA to update those properties. If anyone is interested, I
will post the solution.
 
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