Task shortcuts (not copies of Tasks) in Calendar Appointments (for the Microsoft Office development

[Mark Davies]

If you work on the Microsoft Office development team then please could
you reconsider adding this feature (see below)?

It seems that Outlook 2000 and 2007 calendar appointments do not allow
you to create a SHORTCUT to an Outlook Task object in their Notes
field. Although it is possible to create a COPY of a Task object (which
then also opens as a Task object later, as expected).

But, why is it not possible to create shortcuts? (Ok, granted, there is
the risk of the Outlook data corrupting itself with circular
dependencies, but this is simply an example of a system requirement (as
any other) that can be enforced by implementing system pre-conditions.
So, no problem there, apart from a little extra system resources,
right?)

I think it would be extremely productive. It enables the Outlook user
to manage all their business *task activities* in Outlook Task objects,
recording all business information in the Notes fields.

Then, the user can manage his/her *time* by creating Outlook
Appointments and dragging a Task SHORTCUT to the Notes field of the
Appointment. If, later, the user updates the Task's details (which is
very likely) then the Appointments that refer to the Task will not be
out-of-date as they are not copies but shortcuts.

There is other demand for this feature (see this link):
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/mi...tcut+paste+copy&rnum=2&hl=en#fd5bb519772f7dc7

The work around is to record task details in the Notes field of an
Appointment object. However, the problems with this approach are:

1) this task is not in the Tasks list now. imo all tasks should be in
one place to simplify the process of managing them. (I also have custom
attributes for Tasks that I use to manage them.)

2) if you often need to reserve several appointments in order to
complete the task, you need to copy the Outlook Appointments (btw, the
recurrence feature often cannot be used as this requires a consistent
pattern). When copying Appointments, you are also copying/duplicating
the context (i.e. Notes field etc) and have now created redundancy. So,
in this case when updating and reviewing the context you are not sure
which Appointment has the correct information!

Best regards
Mark

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

a) These are peer-to-peer newsgroups. The Outlook development team doesn't readythem AFAIK.

b) There is apparently a security issue at the bottom of the lack of support for task shortcuts. I don't know the details, but that's the reason I've heard about.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Mark Davies]

Thanks for the reply Sue. If what you say (in b)) is true then
Microsoft are sacrificing functionality for security. Sounds fair
enough, but can't they make it win-win instead of win-lose?

Shouldn't the architecture or design be changed to enable high
security WITH task shortcuts?

At the end of the day, the nature of software development, especially
for enterprise solutions, is a cyclic evolution that is driven by
changing consumer requirements...