Friday, August 29, 2008

Outlook Forms 12 - Access Forms & Folders With Website Link

Issue:
Want to be able to link to Outlook Forms and Folders using internal intranet website.

Quick:
JavaScript to access Exchange server organizational forms library. Client machine needs local outlook profile pointing to the Exchange server in order to open the forms. Link to folders like outlook://Public%20Folders/All%20Public%20Folders/Administration/CompanyCalendar

Visual/Learning:
Found good information on how to do this at: http://www.outlookcode.com/d/code/formonweb.htm
Be aware that you may need to lower browser security for the Local Intranet zone.

First get the Message Class Id for your form.
In Outlook the normal way you would get to a form is by going to the Tools menu, selecting Forms, and selecting "Choose Form..."


In the "Choose Form" window under "Look In:" select "Organization Forms Library" and select the form CheckRequest. By clicking Open you could launch the form and fill it out. In this case I just want to know the message class, so click on the "Details" button and you can see the message class at the bottom of the window.


With the message class information I can modify the java script found on the aforementioned website to access my form.

Here is what the first part of the script looks like. Just sets up variables and the function to open the form.


The next part of the script I have highlighted in yellow the parts I changed to launch 3 company forms using buttons, or to launch the same 3 forms using a web link. This jpg may be hard to see. I tried just entering the text here but each time I did the blog site just tried to interpret the code. The part that gets changed is the Title of the form that you see on the internal website and the message class that gets passed to the function we saw above for opening the form.





When I open the web page in my browser I can now see three buttons and three links for my 3 company forms.


When I click on one of these links I get a warning:


I click yes, and now my form opens so I can fill it out and hit the send button.




While I am on the topic of accessing Exchange information from an internal website, I will mention getting to public folders.
Here is a link to get to our shared company calendar in the public folders.
outlook://Public%20Folders/All%20Public%20Folders/Administration/CompanyCalendar
The calendar is under Administration, which is under "All Public Folders", which is under "Public Folders"
%20 in this link represents a space character.
You can use a link this to access pretty much any public folder.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Jimmy, the access form on website only works if you double click the html file on your desktop, but if you publish it on IIS and access it from other workstation you can access the html but it will not work, if you click any of the buttons the form will not pop up? Do I have missed something?

Thank you.

Jimmy said...

You need to seting security on the workstation to low for your internal website or it will not open. Also when it opens it may open minimized so look for that as well.

Anonymous said...

Hi there! I need some help, is there any way that you can assign multiple fields to a "subject", I need the user to be able to select multiple items in a subject line and have it appear in the subject line; however, I am having trouble doing it.

Jimmy said...

One way to add multiple fields to the subject line is open the properties box for the subject field and go to the value tab. In the initial value section join the fields you want to see using &.
like:
[field1] & [field2]