In/Out Toggle

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Guest

We have staff that are constantly in and out of the office going to job sites
and/or meetings. We want to be able to have an option (preferably in
Outlook) that will allow them to simply click "In" or "Out" and allow our
receptionist to see if they are in the buidling or not very easily. We DO
NOT want to have to use the "Out of Office Assistant" if possible. This
would meet a huge need, especially when phone calls or visitors ask for a
particular person and the receptionist doesn't know if they are in or not.
Thanks for the help.

Aaron
 
Do they create Outlook appointments for those meetings and off-site visits?
If so just use the free/busy finder in the calendar or the view group
schedules function. If you define groups, which can be as small as one
person, and that person has the meeting as an Outlook appointment their time
will show up as busy or out of office or whatever they set in the
appointment.

Otherwise you'd need to use code to have the button you want create an
appointment for that time and set the person to out of office. Then the
receptionist would need to still use free/busy from the meeting planner or
group scheduler or you'd need a fairly big custom application to display
everyone's time blocks in a grid or something.
 
Actually, we have sales men who travel in and out of the office all the time.
What we are looking foris something that when they log in to Outlook (both
on the internal exchange server and web-based Outlook exchange server) they
can press a button (such as Pause/Break) so that when they first log on, it
shows that they are there. Along the same line, if they need to step away
from their desk (so that if a phone call comes in for them), they can push
the same button and it shows them being away.

If there is a way to do this, it would be great. If I need to do some
coding, could you point me in the direction of how to get started and where I
can find resources to help me with the coding. Thanks!
 
What you are looking to do not involves code but multiple types of code. You
would need an Outlook COM addin to handle the cases where the user logs into
Outlook. You would then need code for each version and service pack of
Exchange to handle the Outlook Web Access cases.

OWA code must be recompiled for each new version and SP of Exchange and must
live on the server. It essentially is a completely new OWA that you compile
with your code in it.

You can start your quest at www.outlookcode.com and go from there, but I
warn you in advance that with a COM addin, custom OWA and having to handle
all those free/busy things in code that what you want to do would tax an
advanced Outlook/Exchange developer.
 
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