Outlook Customization with Advanced Regions

Customize Outlook form and Outlook view

Office 2007 and VSTO 3 provide Outlook form regions, a new way to create Outlook custom forms and folder views. The Add-in Express Extensions adds several new features to Outlook forms regions and supports regions on all Outlook versions. Now you can easily extend Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002 (XP) and 2000 with your custom forms and views in C# and VB.NET.

The Add-in Express Extensions is based on the True RAD (Rapid Application Development) paradigm, has an easy-to-use architecture and implements two types of Outlook regions:

Advanced Outlook View Regions. They allow you to:

1) completely replace the content of any Outlook view with your custom form, or
2) host your custom form above, below, to the left and to the right of Outlook views, or
3) embed your form below the Outlook Navigation Pane and To-Do Bar.

Advanced Outlook Form Regions add your custom form to the left, to the right, above and below the body of Outlook forms.

Advanced View Regions - create custom Outlook views - Outlook Today

With the Extensions you can customize / modify Outlook views by placing your forms on the Outlook folder view area. It gives you a chance to use any controls on Outlook folder views, including memos, grids, tree-views, and to integrate your non-Outlook data into Outlook 2003, 2002, 2000 and Outlook 2007.

Customization of "Outlook Today" - Advanced View Regions

With the Add-in Express Extensions you can build feature-rich analogs of "Outlook Today" faster and more effectively than the Dashboard technology does. The Extensions empowers you to completely replace any Outlook folder view with your custom form hosted by an advanced Outlook view region. The main purpose of using your forms instead of Outlook views is the integration of non-Outlook data into the Outlook GUI. For example, you can create an empty Outlook folder, replace a folder view with a form and interact there with data stored on your SQL Server. This will help you concentrate your applied code inside of the Outlook GUI and make Outlook the main application for your end-users or customers.

Integration of view regions into Outlook Today

The most common way used by developers for customizing folder views based on Outlook Today is HTML and ActiveScript. The Extensions can embed your form into Outlook Today, and to quickly integrate your non-Outlook and Outlook data into Outlook Today.

Enhanced Outlook views - Advanced View Regions

In addition, Advanced View Regions allow you to cut in your Outlook custom form above, below, to the left and to the right of the folder views area. You can use view regions to extend Outlook views with any context sensitive data both Outlook and non-Outlook. For example, your form may show the sales volume for the selected contact, or the request history for the currently selected e-mail, or the pay schedule for selected tasks, etc.

Create Outlook custom forms - form regions

With the Extensions you can embed your own forms into any Outlook forms such as e-mail, task, contact, note, calendar / appointment forms (Outlook Inspector window). So, in this way you can develop feature-rich custom Outlook forms with any 3rd-party controls including memos, grids, tree-views, list-views, etc. The Extensions helps you embed your applied code into Outlook forms and control them by your code.

Supported Microsoft Outlook versions

• Microsoft Outlook 2000
• Microsoft Outlook 2002 (XP)
• Microsoft Outlook 2003
• Microsoft Outlook 2007

All Outlook service packs and updates are supported

Supported IDEs and programming languages

Supported languages

• Visual Basic .NET 2003
• Visual Basic .NET 2005
• Visual Basic .NET 2005 Express
• Visual Basic .NET 2008
• Visual C# 2003
• Visual C# 2005
• Visual C# 2005 Express
• Visual C# 2008
• Visual C++ .NET 2003
• Visual C++ .NET 2005
• Visual C++ .NET 2008
• Delphi Prism 2009

IDE

• Visual Studio 2008 Team System
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional
• Visual Studio 2008 Standard
• Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office 2005
• Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office 2005 SE ("Cypress")
• Visual Studio 2005 Team System
• Visual Studio 2005 Professional
• Visual Studio 2005 Standard
• Visual Basic .NET 2005 Express
• Visual C# 2005 Express
• Visual C++ .NET 2005 Express
• Visual Studio 2003 Enterprise Architect 
• Visual Studio 2003 Enterprise Developer
• Visual Studio 2003 Professional
• Visual Studio 2003 Standard
• Delphi Prism 2009 

Visual Studio 2003 Trial (Learning) Edition is not supported.

.NET Framework

• .NET Framework 1.1 and higher