Getting started with an Outlook Add-in

[Griffyn]

The proposed project is to manage our spam quarantine. E-mails that our spam filter is unsure about get put into a public folder on an Exchange Server, which are periodically reviewed. The purpose of the add-in would be to go through the selected items this folder, and forward them on.

I've already written a web service that does this, but there's a few different clicks and refreshes involved, and it would be nice to have everything there in the Outlook folder.

I see there's a product called Add-in Express VCL, which sounds like something I would need, but I can't justify the cost (US$350). Does anyone have a barebones sample of an Outlook Add-in, or can just give me a push in the right direction?

Thanks.

 

[TonHu]

Is your Outlook connected to an Exchange Server (most preferably 2007, as it supports SOAP WebServices ;-)) or just to an POP3/SMTP mail server?

I'm pretty sure Torry lists some free solutions for this problem.

HTH

 

[DjangMan]

I use the Add-In Express product on the .net side. It's a pretty cool tool.

There's also

http://www.rapware.nl/default.asp

which I've used before.

This site seems to have examples for sale:

http://www.imibo.com/imidev/delphi/les/cdoless.html

If you search on Delphi and CDO you should encounter something along the way. Good luck!

 

[Griffyn]

We're using Outlook 2003 with Exchange 5.5. Yeah, I know.

I found this page

http://www.gtro.com/delphi/spamfilter_e.php

which seems to be rare, as pretty much every other code sample I've found requires the Add-In Express product. It has full source code available, and seems to be a pretty good guide. I'll post back once I've had a play.

 

[Griffyn]

Ok, got a framework set up that adds a new toolbar, and a couple of buttons that when pressed run a method, and I can determine what items in that folder are selected. All good so far. I'm confident I'll be able to implement what I need there.

One thing I'm struggling on though, is I only want my toolbar to be visible when a specified folder (the public folder holding the quarantined spam messages) is selected.

I can determine which folder is selected by using ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder.Name, but what I can't figure out is how to get notified whenever the current folder is changed. There's sample code out there for setting up a callback function, but only for C++ and VB.NET, which I can't understand, and the classes they discuss don't seem to be available to me. eg.

http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Cplusplus/Building-An-Outlook-COM-AddIn-With-VC/5/

Can anyone help?

 

[Griffyn]

Gee. Digging around for help on this has opened my eyes a bit on just how much more I don't know about programming in Delphi.

I'm giving up for the moment, and I'll just implement a TTimer that fires every 500ms and checks what the active folder is. Blunt approach I know, but that's all I've got.

If anyone has any clues, or knows anything about event sinks and whether that's the right approach, I'd like to hear from you.

 

[TonHu]

Having seen similar implementations on Outlook, long time ago, and knowing a little about MS's general programming structures, I'd expect that you need to register some call-back with Outlook, that gets called whenever some event, like a folder change, happens.
Wouldn't know how to do that without further investigation, though, and I'd probably be doing it in .NET/C# anyway ;-).

HTH