I’d like to have the ability for a user to go to our intranet portal and add an event, reminder, meeting, or appointment to their own calendar via a simple form and once submitted add the entry to the users mail file directly.
Any ideas of how to accomplish this without doing\needing the following:
No iCal (they want it directly into the users calendar without user intervention)
We don’t have http running on the mail servers, but do have http on some other servers that could process this request
The way to do this is to create a database with the forms you need and allow the users to submit them there (easiest way to make sure you get all the fields is probably to use the mail template to create this database, then strip out what you don’t need.
Once this is done, you will need to handle it one of two ways
You can use the form as a method to collect data, and then when the form is saved/submitted, create the document in the actual document in the mail file for the user (WebQuerySave agent).
Or you may save the document in the web database and write an agent that runs either when a new document is created, or on a schedule (depending on your projected workload for this application). This agent will copy the document into the user’s mail file (you will have to provide a lookup mechanism in the application to get the correct mail file for the authenticated user).
Finally, once the document has been moved to the mail file, you need to determine what to do with the document in the web database. You may either delete it as part of the copy process, or run a scheduled agent to remove empty the database.
Of course, if you need to VIEW/EDIT these documents, you will need to keep them around in the web database as well as perform checks when performing any action on the document, to make sure you are always working on the latest version (and so account for situations in which the user edits the document in his mail file).
If the interactions between mail files and the storage database are complex or happen often, you will have to develop a synchronization process.
If all you need on the web is a front-end for your e-mail/calendar, however, then simple replication between the mail server and the web server will provide you with all you need.