Question on integrating document management with Outlook

[Chris Newby]

We have a mailbox to which we get emails with attachments of specific types.
For reasons of convenience, we are trying to develop a means to filing these
attachments accurately on our file share that is integrated with Outlook. So
a use case would go something like:

- A new email with an attachment arrives in the mailbox.
- An office assistant sees the email and opens it.
- The office assistant is presented with a form that helps him or her file
the attachment according to specific criteria contained in the attachment's
content. This form would contain a series of UI controls like drop-downs and
checkboxes. After setting the appropriate properties, the attachment would
be automatically filed to the appropriate location on our file server
without the assistant having to use something like windows file explorer to
manually put the attachment in the correct location.

Currently, we are looking into developing an Outlook Add-In using .Net. This
morning, however, I stumbled across the Outlook forms designer. Though I
don't see exactly how the forms designer can solve our problem it at least
seems possible.

Does anyone have any ideas on we should best proceed?

TIA//

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

I'd probably do what you want in an addin rather than in a custom form. I
try to avoid custom forms where possible due to issues of forms cache
corruption and the general robustness of forms versus addins. I'd just use a
custom Windows form or whatever from whatever language platform you select
for development.

 

[Chris Newby]

Thanks for the adive Ken. I agree.

I'd probably do what you want in an addin rather than in a custom form. I
try to avoid custom forms where possible due to issues of forms cache
corruption and the general robustness of forms versus addins. I'd just use
a custom Windows form or whatever from whatever language platform you
select for development.