Integration with BCM from .NET

[Dumitru Sbenghe]

Hi,



I try to programmatically add various BCM items from an externally .NET
framework application by using Outlook COM objects. I successfully added a
Business Contact, an Account and an Opportunity into BCM. But, I didn't have
any luck with Business Note, Phone Call and Appointment. I'm receiving the
error "Unhandled Exception: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException
0xA914011A): OpenProperty: cannot open properties which are computed" for
all three items and I don't have any idea what is the problem.



Any hints, any experiences?! It is possible?





Dumitru

 

[Luther]

Do you get the exception creating, setting properties on, or saving the
item?

Can you post some sample code around the exception?

 

[Dumitru Sbenghe]

I got this exception when I'm saving the item; but doesn't matter; I solved
it; it seems that Outlook objects are not consistent about what are the
calculated properties ...

The new problem is that I have code to create an Appointment, PhoneCall,
BusinessNote but the result in Outlook is all the time a PhoneCall

My code is something like that:

JournalItem item =
(JournalItem)folder.Items.Add("IPM.Activity.BCM.BusinessNote");

or

JournalItem item =
(JournalItem)folder.Items.Add("IPM.Activity.BCM.PhoneCall");

or

JournalItem item = (JournalItem)folder.Items.Add("IPM.Activity.BCM");



// here I'm setting some properties

item.Save(); // the result it is always a PhoneCall



where <folder> is a reference to "Business History" outlook folder



I don't know if I'm doing the things correctly (the documentation about BCM
integration is 0 and it is my first meeting with Outlook objects) or the
Outlook objects are not capable to do what I'm trying to do.



Maybe is another way to create these items, but I didn't find it...



Dumitru

 

[Luther]

I got this exception when I'm saving the item; but doesn't matter;

I solved it; it seems that Outlook objects are not consistent
about what are the calculated properties ...

And BCM objects are probably not entirely consistent with Outlook's
either.

The new problem is that I have code to create an
Appointment, PhoneCall, BusinessNote but the result in
Outlook is all the time a PhoneCall

Appointment is a special case here, in that it's probably not
an "IPM.Activity.BCM", but the regular Outlook Calendar.
It appears that BCM creates a companion IPM.Activity.BCM that stores
the Id of the Calendar item stored in PST. When you ask BCM to open an
Appointment Activity, it notes the ID of the Outlook item, and asks
Outlook to open that instead. If Outlook can't find it (e.g. user
deleted Calendar item), then it defaults back to the generic activity
form and displays that.

It's surprising that BCM is defaulting to PhoneCall form instead of
Business Note, which is the default Actvity form in my experience.

I'll do some experiments if I have a chance.

Perhaps it has to do with the properties you are setting, and that you
are missing some essential property. You could compare an item you save
with and item saved by BCM from the UI and see what the deifference is.
Activities properties are saved in something like ActivityMainTable,
and some other tables with foreign keys to the main table. They
probably have a view with all the Activity properties, and you could
compare your object and theirs in that view and figure out what's
different.

You could try creating Activities directly in the db...but you may miss
setting some of the Outlook "hidden" properties that way.