Outlook integration

[ldangelo]

Hi All,

I've been looking for a solution for my PIM/Knowledge Management needs for quite some time. Most of my needs have been met with Ultra Recall. One feature that Ultra Recall does not support out of the box is integration with outlook.

To make a long story short I've been fooling around with interesting ways to integrate ultra recall with outlook and came up with something I thought was really useful (I hope someone else does as well). Essentially I have embedded my outlook inbox, calendar and tasks inside of ultra recall. I have attached a screen shot and the files...

All you need to do is open the html files in explorer. Drag them to ultra recall, name them something appropriate, give them the outlook icon(s) and that's it...

This is a very early idea that I'm still working on improving, but thought someone else might be interested...

[ldangelo]

Enjoy!

[igoldsmid]

That is totally awesome fellow UR'er !!!

Thank you very much.... it totally works great....

IJG

[ldangelo]

I'm working on adding some buttons to control outlook. Like:

new message
send/recieve
copy
delete
etc...

I'll post an update when I get it done.

-LeoD

[igoldsmid]

That's fantastic - you are doing a really valuable service here....

do you think there might be a way, in due course, to get the full Outlook application interface - i.e. with all the tool bars (even third party add-ins) to load inside UR - like it does with pdf's, and other Office Documents?

Or at least a way to be able to have the email reading window seen inside UR to be able to read the body of the email or other outlook items?

Thanks again....

[ldangelo]

I'm working on the preview pane feature. It can be done, however there is not support for it in the outlook view control. Essentially, I would add a script to the file that would provide that functionality.

As far as a "full" outlook ui... I'd really have to think hard about this one... it would be difficult to accomplish with the little "parlor trick" I'm using here.... I'll fool around with some ideas and post any progress... Essentially it may be possible to create a custom web control that "hosts" the outlook ui...

[rewing]

This rocks. Thanks so much. Truly makes UR function as my dashboard.

I wonder if there is a way to create a shortcut for different views of the folder. I noticed when I open OL and change the view, the corresponding view in UR changes as well. If there was a way to point to a specific view, then I could create seperate shortcuts in UR for each view that was of interest. Possibilities abound!

Thanks again for your contribution here.

[wmson]

This is great! Thank you so much.

[lsebba]

This is great. Is there any way to do it for the "Sent Items" folder as well?

[alx]

Yes there is; you can actually edit the .html files that ldangelo has contributed to show whichever Outlook folder you want.

Just open the file in a text editor like notepad and change the VALUE parameter to "Sent Items" or whatever folder you want; then import the file to UR.

Just make sure that you provide the names exactly as used by Outlook itself or else you'll get a blank page.

The English Outlook folder names seem to work in international versions of Outlook as well, i.e. my own version is in Greek but I didn't need to change the folder names to their Greek equivalent.

Thanks ldangelo; this is a brilliant piece of work and it definitely highlights the hidden UR power!

alx

[alx]

It is interesting to note that UR plus the Outlook module needed for ldangelo's trick consume significantly less memory than a full Outlook instance.

So if you maintain UR open all the time like I do, this is a great way to maintain low memory overhead.

alx

[maynard]

Originally posted by alx
Yes there is; you can actually edit the .html files that ldangelo has contributed to show whichever Outlook folder you want. Just open the file in a text editor like notepad and change the VALUE parameter to "Sent Items" or whatever folder you want; then import the file to UR.

I tried this on a different Contacts folder and it didn't work. Came up blank. (I don't use the main Contacts folder. My contacts are partitioned into several other parallel folders by category.)

Where can I get documentation on this Outlook voodoo??

This is quite cool.

Thanks
Maynard

[alx]

Maynard,

I have no idea about documentation, I just played around a bit because I've got a few non-standard Outlook folders I want to use through UR.

My guess would be that the blank page means that the address for the specific folder you want to view is not recognised by Outlook.

If your specific contacts folder is subsidiary to another folder, say MyFolder, try setting the VALUE parameter to "MyFolder\Contacts", i.e. describing the specific hierarchical position of the folder you want to view.

Another thing you can do is to download Outlook Linker; this handy utility runs in the systray and copies the specific Outlook folder/item address to the clipboard; set it to "Oulook Format" and you'll be able to see the name that Outlook itself uses to refer to a folder.

Get it here:
https://kinook.com/Download/LinkerForWindowsSetup.exe

alx

[maynard]

Outlook Linker. That's the hot tip.

Outlook Linker generated this.
Outlook:\\Personal Folders\Contacts\Education\

Changed your html code to this and it works perfectly!
<object id=ViewCtlFolder classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046
width="100%" height="100%"><PARAM NAME="Folder" VALUE="Contacts\Education"></object>

Thanx

[Rbrux]

This is very useful - and clever.

Am I right in thinking that it is still necessary for Outlook to be running in order to send/receive mail?

For example, when I compose a message by right clicking from within the browser view and then hit 'send' it does not seem to go until Outlook has been started up.

Or is there a way to get this done from within the browser view?