Microsoft Outlook is one of the most widely used email applications for Windows based computers. The out of the box functionality provides users with a very rich set of features for email creation and management, contact management,
and appointment scheduling.
While these features are sufficient for most home and
business users, they do not meet the needs and desires of some corporations. Especially
those companies that are very large, need to coordinate many people, meetings and resources,
or want to provide corporate database integration into the various forms and features
of Outlook. Historically, proprietary add-ons to Outlook have been costly to create
and maintain, difficult to setup, and required the use of highly skilled programmers.
With the release of Microsoft’s new programming tools for Office 2003 and the .Net framework, such customization has been made vastly less complicated.
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We are currently developing an exciting add-on that will allow
companies to integrate their corporate data into Outlook so that users will be able
to access and update shared contact lists, calendars, notes, and any other proprietary
data.
This will not require any changes to existing applications or data, nor will
it require the installation or use of Microsoft Exchange Server.
The data and functionality
are available to users regardless of whether they are in the office or on the road,
connected to the Internet or not. We foresee many possibilities for companies to
become more efficient and tightly integrated without an excessive investment in a new or
additional systems. Also, because the system takes advantage of Outlook, an application interface
that users are already trained on and familiar with, increased productivity should easily result. |