FYI: New Look Into the Future of Outlook Development (Outlook 2007 Preview Docs Released)
The Office 2007 Product teams have begun posting public information on the new Office suite including the Outlook 2007 team giving an overview of what is new for developers in Outlook 2007…
“…Outlook 2007 object model includes more than 85 new objects and the size of the object model has more than doubled…”
What is New for Developers in Outlook 2007? (Part 1)
https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ms772422(office.12).aspx
What is New for Developers in Outlook 2007? (Part 2)
https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ms772423(office.12).aspx
…Many of the changes, additions, and new features of Outlook 2007 development are quite significant and eagerly awaited by the development community. Most significant IMHO are the changes to security and the form region technology…
The new articles below give examples of Outlook 2007 Add-ins as well as discuss the security changes to Outlook 2007 which will greatly enhance the development experience as well as the user experience.
Outlook 2007 Sample Add-ins…
https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ms778811(office.12).aspx
Code Security Changes in Outlook 2007…
https://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ms778202(office.12).aspx
Another important and less public announcement is the release of a free Visual Studio 2005 Add-on currently called Cypress which will allow you create Outlook 2007 Add-ins with VS 2005.
“...Cypress is an add-on and is incremental. It is not, itself a complete Visual Studio product release. Anyone who has a licensed version of Visual Studio 2005 will be eligible to download Cypress for free.”
Cypress Announcement…
https://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=459132&SiteID=1
…Keep in mind this is not a full feature set like Visual Studio Tools for Office. The release of the full Visual Studio Tools for Office is slated with the next release of Visual Studio currently code named Orcas. This is important as many were worried that VSTO 2005 would not be able to build Add-ins for Outlook 2007 (which it can’t without Cypress)…
The developer help files were updated for Office 2007 recently. As the product is in beta, we are providing updates to the documentation as it becomes available. Keep in mind that the documentation is in beta just like the product so feel free to voice your opinions on both.
Updated Developer Help files for Office 2007…