Outlook To Go, anyone?
The final session I delivered at TechEd SEA 2008 was one titled "Outlook Application To Go! Building an Occasionally-connected outlook add-in using Outlook+Services Blueprint". I tag-teamed with Patrick Yong, for this instructor-led lab (ILL). Patrick developed a workflow hosted as a WCF service, and it serves as an Issues Tracker. With oil price only increasing, and the cost of living skyrocketing, people need a solution to keep track of their issues. :)
Essentially this lab introduces a manifestation of Software + Services, in the form of an Outlook application to go! Outlook + Services is one of the blueprints published under Software + Services Blueprints. You need to install the Software-plus-Services Blueprints, and the Software-plus-Services Blueprints Manager which is a Visual Studio 2008 extension that gives you all the nifty features of developing an Outlook add-in at blazing pace.
This lab was developed by both Patrick and myself, hence it was exclusive at TechEd SEA 2008. I've developed the lab manual in simple steps, which do not require you to type in code. I've also prepared a bunch of code snippets (all C#), which you could use the keyword shortcut to insert into your code. I've also setup all the bookmarks all over the classes so that all you need is to follow the sequence of the bookmarks. Bookmarks in Visual Studio 2008 is an excellent feature to guide both the presenter as well as the lab participants on where to insert code. The shortcut is as follows:
- Go to the bookmark item.
- Say this is the first todo item, type "todo1", and press the Tab button twice, and VOILA!
The lab content is explained well in the manual. Enjoy reading the manual.
Extract the code snippets into My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets