Outlook Add-In

Spark Spark Dev
1

I love this project that you guys have worked on and I think this is an execlent resource for small companies. Just a suggestion it would be great if there was an outlook add-in. I have the openfire server link with the active directory, and it would be great if there were an add-in you can install to tell if a user is online when then send you an email. or start a conference when you receieve an email.

Any thoughts? Is this already out there?

Again, love the application you guys did a great job!

Thanks,

Harry Caskey

2

Outlook is just a client (a proprietary client). An interface such as that would need hooks into the server as well. This would further complicate matters of proprietary software ( e.x. exchange). This as been discussed many times in the past and there does not seem any avenue for this to develop in an open source environment.

3

Thanks for the response! Yeah I figured as much, I was just thinking how skype has an add-on so that when you are looking through your emails and such if there is a valid telephone number you can click on it, then skype will open and call that person. I was kinda thinking along the same lines. I just wanted to throw that out there. But thanks the response and I look forward to seeing how this project develops

Thanks,

  • Harry
4

Proprietary is a bit vague as a concept. Yes of course literally speaking Outlook/Exchange ar MS only technologies. However when the entire world uses them, then perhaps we should consider calling Spark & Openfire (and the likes) proprietary, if they do not work with them…

5

No what i meant to say, is closed source. There are some opensource exchange tie ins but for the most part the source for Outlook/Exchange is closed. It makes developing for the products difficult at best.

6

It’s all good, I just thought it would be neat to have something auto-detect if a user was online and if so chat with them on spark. But I love the software you guys developed and we use it all the time here. Great job and keep up the good work.

Thanks,

  • Harry Caskey
7

Hello,

I believe Outlook actually has a plugin infrastruture so it would be possible to integrate some sort of XMPP presence into Outlook, which as others have pointed out is easier than integrating Outlook/Exchange functionality into Spark.

As for the proprietary discussion, from an integration standpoint the problem with Outlook/Exchange isn’t that they’re propriety or even closed source, it’s that the protocol that they use to communicate is proprietary. While you could argue that Spark/Openfire are proprietary implementations they both use an open protocol so integrating them with other XMPP servers and clients that are closed or open source isn’t a problem.

Cheers,

Ryan