[BOUNTY] Reminders for my reminders

[Jay Levitt]

[I posted this in m.p.o.thirdpartyutil a week ago, but this group seems
like it would also be on-topic... sorry for the repost.]

I'll give a $100 bounty for a program (either add-in or external) that
meets these specs:

1. Every night, at a set time, notify my of any Outlook appointments
tomorrow
2. No notification if there are no appointments
3. Preferred notification: Pop-up window (must show up even when Outlook is
not in front)
4. Alternate notification: Send an e-mail to me
4a. If notification is by e-mail, it must use pure SMTP. It cannot rely on
MAPI, and it cannot rely on having an e-mail account configured in Outlook
4b. My mail server requires ESMTP AUTH. If that's hugely difficult I may
be able to configure a way around that.
5. Either way, the program must not rely on MAPI to communicate with
Outlook, because, let's face it, that just never ever works when Outlook's
not your e-mail program
6. Runs on Windows XP SP2, Outlook 2007 SP1
7. Deals with any redemption-library issues if that's still relevant today
8. Licensed with an OSSI-approved license so we can give back to the
community (I will do the work of setting up a public repository)
9. Doesn't rely on clever keyboard-macro tricks that will break/lose focus
if I'm in the middle of something else

 

[Jonathan]

I think Task Manager 2007 can do that with it's Outlook synchronization and
auto-email reminders. Download at www.orbisoft.com

 

[Jay Levitt]

I think Task Manager 2007 can do that with it's Outlook synchronization and
auto-email reminders. Download at www.orbisoft.com

Nope; it only syncs tasks, not calendar appointments. Thanks for the tip,
though!

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Take a look at the list of Outlook addins on the Utilities page at
www.slipstick.com for any that might meet your needs. If none are there they
probably don't exist.

Any custom addin written to your specifications would cost in the range of
thousands of dollars, unless you can program what you want yourself.

 

[Jay Levitt]

Take a look at the list of Outlook addins on the Utilities page at
www.slipstick.com for any that might meet your needs. If none are there they
probably don't exist.

Yeah, I did, and they don't. I don't suppose it's a very common use case -
"Help! I absolutely never look at my calendar, but everything in it is
mission-critical and must be prepared 48 hours in advance!" It's more of a
Deilbert film than a use case.

Any custom addin written to your specifications would cost in the range of
thousands of dollars, unless you can program what you want yourself.

Thousands? Really? No wonder consultants love Office-based systems!
It's been a decade or so since I tried writing "Office applications", but
isn't it just some VBA to hook things together, plus whatever the latest
brand name is for OLE/COM/etc?

I just don't know enough about the modern way to interact live with an
Office calendar and fetch its data. If there's a "Hello World" that does..
somethign, anything.. with that, I could turn into a process (launched by
the existing system scheduler) once a day that scans the Outlook Calendar,
and turns everything into a line in a text file. A batch file then decides
if the entries are worth notificiations or nort, draws the windows, etc.

seems like something I could do in an hour or two if I knew how Offce's
APIs worked... definitely not thousands of dollars.

Any Hello Worlds come to mind the that I could build on?

Jay

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

No serious Outlook developer will develop an application using the Outlook
VBA project. COM addins are the way to go. I'd be very surprised if anyone
who actually knows what they're doing would do a project like that for less
than I mentioned, but you never know.

You can look at www.outlookcode.com for tons of Outlook code samples,
perhaps something there could provide a starter project for you.

 

[Jay Levitt]

If there's a "Hello World" that does..
something, anything.. with that, I could turn into a process (launched by
the existing system scheduler) once a day that scans the Outlook Calendar,
and turns everything into a line in a text file.

Hey, I'll answer my own question and go one even better than Hello World:

http://rubyonwindows.blogspot.com/2007/07/automating-outlook-with-ruby-calendar.html

That oughta do what I need. Thanks for the inspiration, Ken