Programming Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange

Rizzo breaks collaborative apps into five categories: messaging, tracking, workflow, real-time and knowledge management; though an app may have elements from each. Naturally, there are gotchas even in MS programming paradise. For example, Rizzo explains how Outlook 2000 implements a cut down IE for HTML display, but to fully implement security in frames you have to force it to use IE itself--which then means you can't access some of Outlook's enhancements.

ASP features large, for example, to convert Outlook forms to HTML. This throws up more gotchas as Outlook's forms have more features than are available in HTML. There's a discussion of the new Digital Dashboards in Chapter 11 which use ActiveX objects, details on new and improved features of Exchange 5.5, such as the Event Scripting Agent and naturally the obligatory chapter on XML and XSL. But this is a book about using the results of such technologies rather than programming with them.

Rizzo had access to the Outlook and Exchange developers so the book feels authoritative, with example apps and code, all of it on the accompanying CD. But Microsoft's hand lies humourless and heavy. In places the book reads more like a press release. Still, anyone building collaborative apps using Outlook and Exchange will benefit from this book, just don't count the evangelising. -- Steve Patient

Amazon.com
Programming Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange is a thorough guide for building collaborative applications such as threaded discussions and electronic business documents. Early on, the book describes four types of collaborative applications: messaging, tracking, workflow, and real-time applications. Author Thomas Rizzo shows the strengths of Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server for collaboration, including the many built-in security and administration features.

Rizzo also covers Outlook 98 development, explaining how to customize folders, fields, and views (including rules and filtered replication of messages). He then shows how to create Outlook forms, with instruction on how to use components and add VBScript event handlers. An account tracking application demonstrates all the basics on this topic.

The second half of the book is strong on building Web-based collaborative applications and covers Web tools such as Outlook Today and the Outlook HTML Form Converter. Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) objects are fully explained, showing how they can be built with ASPs and viewed in a browser. Rizzo provides excellent samples for a help desk, a calendar of events, and an intranet news application, and carefully lists the exact versions of various Microsoft tools required to run each example successfully.

The book closes with material on the Event Scripting Agent and Exchange Server Routing Objects, which provide fault-tolerant message delivery. --Richard Dragan