Recommend book or site to learn Outlook 2007/VS 2008 VSTO programm

[Ken]

What resources would you recommend to learn VSTO programming for Outlook 2007
using VS 2008? Most of what I saw at Amazon.com was written in 2006 or was
just for VS 2005. And I have been unable to locate a website dedicated to
this.

I need to create an Outlook 2007 compatible add-in, and would prefer to do
so using VS 2008. I know VB.Net and C#, and can work in either VS 2005 or VS
2008. My preference is VS 2008.

Some of the capabilities of this Outlook add-in include:
- Enable one user to add tasks to another user's task list.
- Enable user to retrieve and edit another user's personal contacts.
- Alert user when a new task has been added by another user.
- Install/Uninstall functionality needs to exist that can be deployed
remotely.

There are more requirements than that, but that summarizes the core pieces
of this project. I'm primarily a web developer. VSTO development is brand
new to me.

Thanks for your feedback.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The version of VSTO does not make any difference in terms of Outlook functionality. It mainly changes the way you deploy the application and what tools you have for adding user interface elements. There are a lot of good VS2008 samples and articles that should help you get started, architecture-wise; see http://www.outlookcode.com/news.aspx?id=39. Come back here or visit my web site (see signature) to ask questions about specific Outlook object, methods, properties, and events.

 

[Ken]

Sue,
Thanks for responding. Your website and book look like good starting points.
I have VSTO for Mere Mortals, but since that was for the older version I
figured it would not be very useful for the 2008 development. Your book will
be worth adding to my library since it's Outlook focused. My local Borders
didn't have it, but there is always Amazon.com.

Also, I printed some MSDN articles:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb872399.aspx

I was reading a chapter in Professional C# 2008 that introduces VSTO, and it
left me with the impression that 2008 addressed some problems with 2005 SE.

While getting my hands dirty with a basic project, one thing I noticed was
that VS 2008 did not create a Setup project with my Outlook Add-In solution.
That was a bit disconcerting, because what I read for 2005 was that the
install/uninstall project was automatically generated when the solution was
created. Is there some checkbox option that I need to select in Visual
Studio to have that generated as well?

 

[Ken]

Sue, I just ordered your book.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

VS2008 uses ClickOnce deployment by default. I would suggest that you ask about deployment issues in the VSTO forum. The article at http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3396913&SiteID=1 has links to the key deployment articles.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Be sure to get the sample code from http://www.outlookcode.com/member/book.aspx. Note that my book has no ..NET code in it, but covers the basics of Outlook programming using mostly VBA examples, which you'll find very useful for quick prototyping, without the overhead of .NET builds.

 

[Ken]

Here are some great links I found yesterday and today.

VSTO 2008 Resource List - Has numerous great links, including blogs for VSTO
experts. If you're working in VSTO, visit and bookmark this link.
http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3396913&SiteID=1

Developer Center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d2tx7z6d.aspx

Outlook 2007 Object Model
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb208225.aspx

Video tutorial by Steve Hanson of OfficeZealot.com
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb851471.aspx

 

[GraemeWT]

Hi Ken,
I am setting out to build an Outlook AddIn to provide functionality similar
to what you have described. I found your post and the replise very helpful.
I would be very interested in understanding how you have progressed with
your project and in sharing how I am progressing - if you are interested.

 

[KenPalmer]

The business owner decided to go with a 3rd party product after the initial
development estimate (sans project management expenses) came in at around 450
hours. I got Sue Mosher's book and "Programming Applications for MS Office
Outlook 2007", which both had good information.

Unfortunately, much of what the client requested for the functionality was
literally breaking new ground for the available toolsets. For example, the
client requested a notifcation mechanism for Tasks to be put in place similar
to the Outlook email notification that appears near the system tray when you
receive a new email. At first blush you would think that would be a simple
thing to do in with the toolset, but no mechanism exists to readily replicate
that functionality.

One clarification is in order here. My 9 years of development experience is
primarily with web applications. Desktop applications and add-ins were brand
new to me. And there was no resource on my team (other than my boss) who had
worked with add-ins before. Given that, some of my estimate factored in the
learning curve as well.

I was given time to work on the estimate, and while doing so built a very
small prototype to get comfortable with the environment. But that was an
extremely limited piece of code.

I strongly recommend that when you start working on this application you do
so on a virtual machine so you don't impact Outlook on your primary
workstation. We set up virtual machines with Windows XP and Vista.

The message board here is great. Hey, if you can exchange ideas with experts
like Sue Mosher, you're in great company. Good luck.

Ken

 

[GraemeWT]

Thanks Ken for the reply. All feedback is helpful.
We are planning to implement a few simple business workflow processes as
Outlook AddIn projects. We see the user interface versitality and ease of use
a powerful starting point for what we want to do.
The first process we will do is a "Leave Application". The AddIn will access
a corporate database to gather some reference data then create a custom task
to represent a workflow instance. The task will be sent to the various actors
involved in the process according to rules defined as part of the Workflow
definition.
The development environment in Visual Studio 2008 with VSTO seems to be very
powerful!

 

[KenPalmer]

Sounds like an interesting project. I agree, VS 2008 with VSTO is very
powerful. The improvement of that IDE over even 2005 is significant.

We built a workflow engine that has a web service and a corresponding web
interface to administer the routes. This week and next I'm working on
enhancements to that workflow administration tool. The really powerful thing
about that workflow engine is we can apply workflow routes to virtually any
of our ASP.Net applications, as long as they can access the web service.
Right now it services about 10 production applications.