BCM Sharing, Add-Ins and Synchronization

  • Thread starter Thread starter nalpakj nalpakj
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nalpakj nalpakj

I've created the base for an Outlook add-in that allows me to maintain additional information on a new region within a BCM Account. The thing I'm trying to get past is the best way to store this data and some problems related to that.

Let me say first that simply using custom fields is not feasible due to the nature of the data I'm capturing. That is not negotiable.

The first idea I dismissed was the idea of building an XML document containing all the data I need and attaching that to the Account. I saw this method used in an Add-In example downloaded from Microsoft's site. There are 2 problems with this. First, the attachment approach didn't seem to work when using a shared database. Second, I need to be able to efficiently report on the data collected though this custom region. An attachment to an Outlook Item would not provide an effective reporting repository.

The most reasonable idea, I think, is just to define custom tables in the BCM database. This gets a little tricky because it would have to write to either the shared database, or the offline database depending on whether the user is offline or not. If writing to the offline database, then the data must be synchronized at some point.

I can work through the synchronization algorithm if I need to, but I have the following questions:

1. Is there some built-in feature of the BCM synch mechanism that can synch custom data?

2. Is there some storage option for this custom data that I'm completely missing?

3. If I need to write my own synch algorithm, is there some event that I can subscribe to that will tell me when the standard OCM synch is being performed so that I can piggy back on to that to perform my own?


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I don't think you are going to find any extensibility mechanism for
synch. The offline sync is exporting and importing BCM files in the
background, and from experience working with BCM import/export, I think
that algorithm is hardcoded--it's definately not syncing every table in
the database. The export is very carefully picking what to put in the
BCM files and in what order, so that the import can recreate the items
in the correct order.

I also suspect that it is the BCM MAPI store syncronizing between the
two databases, so there won't be any Outlook events you can hook into.
 
I am looking to do a very similar thing - have an add-in that collects,
stores, and retrieves auxillary data for each contact. I also cannot use the
custom fields option. What I'm exploring right now, and think is the way I'm
going to go, is to use a completely seperate database for my custom field
data. That way I can use the SQL Server synchronization functionality and do
not have to worry about messing up the BCM database or its sync process. Any
other thoughts on this subject, including alternate ways of doing this would
be very helpful...to myself, and I'm sure others in the group I'm sure.

Thanks,
Scott

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