VSTO Outlook Calendar

VSTO Outlook Calendar

• Dark_V

  John,

   

  thanks for the response.  I understand that the permission can be modified for each users calendar to allow others read access.  I was hoping that with VSTO I could write a pluggin for outlook that would not only display the current users calendar but other users as well.

  I work for a small software development consulting company and we have written an web application that uses WebDav to basicaly mimic what OWA does with calendaring, execpt to pull all users calendars in a given AD group so that we can easily see everyone's schedule. It does this by using a service accout that has rights to all users exchange store in that AD group.

  I wanted to build the same functionality into outlook using VSTO, by telling outlook to load all users calendar within a given AD group instead to just the current one and display them all on the same calendar.  maybe this is not possible though. 

   

  Thanks for the help

   

  Matt

  
  

• bakuls

  What you are attempting to do is a common request. You can assign permissions programmatically so that managers have read-access to the calendars of others without the employees having to explicitly grant this. However, the only way for someone besides the user to assign these permissions is for someone with more Exchange/Outlook permissions to assign the delegation ie: Administrator.

  I recommend you have a process whereby when the structure of the organization changes, you run an application that programmatically goes through the Exchange Organization structure and assigns the delegation permissions. This could be done via an Exchange Event Sink. The advantage to this architecture is that it will be server-side (nothing to deploy all over the organization and a much simpler means of maintaining etc.), you can run in higher permission-mode but have complete control over what is going on, and it is easy to gain access to the AD and so forth right there on the server (fewer connnectivity issues etc.).

  The challenge is that writing Exchange Event Sinks is not for the beginner. I have written many of these sinks for customers over the years, and I think they are actually quite fun to do. But, there is a learning curve you will need to follow.

  You can learn more about it here:

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/e2k3/e2k3/_exch2k_ole_db_server_events_overview.asp frame=true

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/e2k3/e2k3/_exch2k_using_store_events.asp frame=true

  You should also learn about the its security architecture:

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/e2k3/e2k3/_exch2k_security_in_an_event_sink.asp frame=true

  And, you should learn about the AD and the dev tools for Exchange. They are also in the same MSDN library. You should check out the Exchange Developer Center on MSDN here:

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp url=/library/en-us/dnanchor/html/exchangesvr.asp

  Keep in mind that this forum is really for Visual Studio Tools for Office solutions and issues that directly relate to our tools support. You will be best served by posting your non-VSTO tools questions to other forums and newsgroups that are specifically designed to handle those questions.

  Best of luck to you!

  John.

   

  
  
  
• VSTO Outlook Calendar