Is it a standard practice to automate outlook from a web application using ActiveX technology? How does this compare with a web scheduler like telerik's RadScheduler + telerik's Exchange Provider to schedule an appointment from the web application itself?
Thanks,
Sendhil
You will need to provide more details about what you are trying to accomplish rather then just stating automation of outlook within a web application. The reason I say this is because it really depends on what you are trying to do. If all you are trying to do is create an appointment then no you do not need activex.
Here is something you can research or look into. Go into outlook right now, create an appointment. Then go to the file menu and do a "Save As" and save the appointment onto your desktop. You will notice the file is stored as a .ics file. You can actually open this file in notepad or word and view the contents of it.
For example here is a sample of what it looks like in notepad:
So now think about this, you can use asp.net / asp to generate an appointment because you have access to a StreamWriter and a memory stream. What exactly does this mean, it means you can generate a text file just like this and guess what if you generate a text file like this then you just created an appointment. Here is an example I wrote for a calendar item, I had written a tool to track vacation / time off requests for a company I work at. One of the features managers wanted was a way to add the employee request to the managers calendar. Due to managers always being inside of outlook they wanted to quickly glance at their outlook calendar and see who was in the office and who wasn't. Sure they could manually create the outlook calendar item but too much manual work was not ideal.
So I used a StreamWriter and a memory stream to generate an outlook calendar item.
Here is an example:
There are ways that you can automate MS office from an asp.net application but such you do so at your own risk. If I remember correctly, you will more than likely need to use impersonation in order for dcom to function correctly and in doing so you will possibly leave a large security hole in your web application.
I would suggest using Open Office XML as MS does not recommend nor support automating Office from within a web application.