Syncronization of Outlook Contacts

[ckpeel]

Hi,

I've been asked to sync our application 'contacts' to local outlook contacts so that we can store user info in the application (DB) and push it out to eveyone's local Outlook.

I see some utilities developed to do just this a.k.a. Intellisync.

Can anyone point me to an article or 'how to' document on how to approach this. Ideally they - the boss - want's this as a button on outlook they press and syncs the contacts up with the application and local install.

I know VBA quite well (Access/Excel and Word). I have not done anything in Outlook so I'm just looking for some good direction.

Thanks if anyone can point me in the write direction.

Chris
chrisp@aci.on.ca

 

[glenntb]

Chris,

Are you familar with the "Share" option? You can create one Contact folder in a Personal Folder, add all your company contacts, and then under the File menu, select "Share". The wizard will walk you through adding the individuals (you can use groups to simplify this step), and what permission each person has. (The default is "read only".)

The folder is then copied to each individual's mailbox, and as changes are made to the master copy, they will be automatically synced up to those idividual copies.

We're just starting to play with this ourselves, but so far, it looks really good!

Glenn

 

[ckpeel]

Thanks Glenn - This will help with keeping everyone in sync with the system. But the problem I'm dealing with is not just sync with each person but keeping in sync with the our application DB (MS SQL Server).

I've seen some tools that do this - I think Intellisync from Puma also offers some development tools... I was hoping to find some 'code samples' for importing/exporting contacts into outlook from a ODBC source.

The share you talk about will make it easy to share a common view around with people - and I will need that too.

Thanks.

 

[ckpeel]

Glenn, I don't find any 'share' option under my file menu? Where do I turn this on from?

 

[glenntb]

We just had another user report the same thing here... we had to install the "Net Folders" option from the Office 2000 installation CD in order for them to access it. I don't recall doing that on my PC, but maybe I already had it for some reason.

The only thing I can suggest for the database part of your thread, is that you look at the "Import and Export" wizard of Outlook. The wizard can again be accessed from the "File" menu, but again, you may need the "Net Folders" option to access it the first time.

This wizard walks you through importing contacts from a spreadsheet, text file, etc. If you can get your database to one of these intermediate files, you should be able to import it directly into a Contact file. Then if you share that file like we discussed earlier, you should have your solution. I'm sure there is probably a faster way through code, but I don't think I'm the guy to help with that.

Hope this helps!

Glenn

 

[chookman]

Hi Chris and other posters,
I also want to do the same thing, thats how I got to this thread.
I have three major souces of contact lists in the company network (MS Great Plains SQL DB,Micropay- OBDC and MS Access contact List). I need some VBA code I can run in an Access 2002 database that will programmatically make the new contacts. I have been able to make a read/write link to a contact folder in Exchange 2000 Public Folders, which will be the destination, and links to my data sources. I found that just running an append query does make a new contact with all the data in it, but something is missing because I cant open that newly made contact in outlook.

Thanks in Advance.

 

[glenntb]

Try inserting an apostrophe (') at the beginning of every data field. For some reason, Outlook Contacts seem to require this.

Glenn

 

[ckpeel]

I ended up just using the contactitem in Outlook. I wrote a piece of code in VBA that connects to our application (via an COM object) - then opens the defualt contact folder/adds a folder an then adds the contact (with ContactItem).