Contents Overview 1 Creating a Digital Dashboard 2 Creating Folder Home Pages 16 Using the Outlook View Control 23 Customizing Outlook Today 34 Lab A: Building a Digital Dashboard 54 Lab B: Adding a Folder Home Page to the MoveApp 59 Review 64 Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard Information in this document is subject to change without notice. The names of companies, products, people, characters, and/or data mentioned herein are fictitious and are in no way intended to represent any real individual, company, product, or event, unless otherwise noted. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation. If, however, your only means of access is electronic, permission to print one copy is hereby granted. 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The names of companies, products, people, characters, and/or data mentioned herein are fictitious and are in no way intended to represent any real individual, company, product, or event, unless otherwise noted. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Project Advisor: Janet Wilson Project Lead and Instructional Designer: Anne Bockman (Excell Data Corporation) Instructional Designers: Josh Barnhill (Volt Technical) and Jo Berry (Exchange) Lead Program Manager: Greg Bott Program Managers: Colleena Carr and Chris Boar (Intl Vendor) Graphic Artist: Andrea Heuston (Artitudes Layout and Design) Editing Manager: Lynette Skinner Editor: Jennifer Kerns (S&T Onsite) Copy Editor: Shari G. Smith (R & S Consulting) Online Program Manager: Arlo Emerson (Aditi) Production Support: Irene Barnett (Barnett Communications) Manufacturing Manager: Bo Galford Manufacturing Support: Mimi Dukes (S&T Onsite) Development Services: Kimber Dodge Lead Product Manager: Mary Larson Group Product Manager: Robert Stewart Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard iii Instructor Notes Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard This module provides students with the ability to create a digital dashboard by using features of Microsoft ® Outlook ® 2000. The module enables students to associate folder home pages with Outlook 2000 folders, incorporate the Outlook view control on Web pages, and customize the default Outlook Today Web page to add functionality and information relevant to their application. By using these skills along with other skills specific to digital dashboards, students will be able to create digital dashboards that present targeted, dynamic information to users. Materials and Preparation This section provides you with the materials and preparation needed to teach this module. Materials To teach this module, you need the following materials:  Microsoft PowerPoint ® file 1593a_08.ppt  Module 8, “Creating a Digital Dashboard” Preparation To prepare for this module, you should:  Read all the materials for this module.  Read the instructor notes and margin notes for the module.  Complete the labs. Presentation: 60 Minutes Labs: 75 Minutes iv Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard Module Strategy Use the following strategy to present this module:  Creating a Digital Dashboard Provide an introduction to digital dashboards, including definitions of knowledge worker and information sections. Describe the capabilities of digital dashboards. Explain how to integrate Web content and connect to business data within a digital dashboard. Explain how to personalize and customize a digital dashboard. Explain how to enable a digital dashboard for offline use. Explain how to deploy a digital dashboard.  Creating Folder Home Pages Explain how to associate a folder home page with a folder and provide information about setting security for folder home pages. Describe strategies for using the Outlook view control within a folder home page. Explain how to access the Outlook object model and access Outlook 2000 folders from within a folder home page.  Using the Outlook View Control Introduce the Outlook view control and describe how this Microsoft ActiveX ® control can be used to mimic Outlook view functionality in a Web page. Demonstrate how to add the control in the Web page and then show some of the properties and methods of the Outlook view control that students can use to integrate the control into their solutions. Explain how to use the Outlook view control within a folder home page.  Customizing Outlook Today Provide an overview of Outlook Today. Explain the ways in which the Outlook Today Web page can be modified. Describe how to choose which method to use for distributing a custom Outlook Today page. Explain how to customize the Outlook Today .htm and .dll files. Describe the performance limitations of Outlook Today and explain how to overcome browser issues within Outlook Today. Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard 1 Overview  Creating a Digital Dashboard  Creating Folder Home Pages  Using the Outlook View Control  Customizing Outlook Today At the end of this module, you will be able to:  Deploy a digital dashboard to users.  Use scripting, the Microsoft ® Outlook ® object model, and the Outlook view control on a custom a folder home page.  Use the Outlook view control to add Outlook 2000 view functionality to your application.  Deploy a customized Outlook Today page to users. Slide Objective To provide an overview of the module topics and objectives. Lead-in In this module, you will learn about creating folder home pages, using the Outlook view control, customizing Outlook Today, and creating a digital dashboard. 2 Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard    Creating a Digital Dashboard  Introduction to Digital Dashboards  Capabilities of Digital Dashboards  Integrating Web Content  Connecting to Business Data  Personalization and Customization  Enabling Offline Use  Deploying a Digital Dashboard You can take advantage of the development features of Outlook 2000— especially folder home pages, the Outlook view control, and Outlook Today— to create a digital dashboard. A digital dashboard is a Web page or a series of Web pages, running inside Outlook 2000, that consolidate personal, team, corporate, and external information. A digital dashboard can be as simple as a single Web page that displays a user’s daily calendar and favorite links or a full-featured knowledge-management solution that joins information from enterprise and external sources. By using the technologies and programming techniques discussed in this module, you can create a digital dashboard based on Outlook Today. Digital dashboards utilize Outlook Today to access critical business information, and take advantage of the analysis tools, collaboration capabilities, and Internet and messaging standards support in Microsoft Office 2000. Slide Objective To outline this topic. Lead-in You can create a digital dashboard by using skills you learned that relate to folder home pages, the Outlook view control, and the Outlook Today Web page. Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard 3 Introduction to Digital Dashboards DigitalDesktop – Microsoft Outlook F ile Edit View Favorites Tools Actions Help New Reply Reply to Al lForward Send/Receive DigitalDesktop – Digital Dashboard Folder List DigitalDesktop Outlook Today – [Mailbox Calendar Contacts Deleted Items Drafts Forums Inbox (7) Journal Notes Outbox Sent Items Tasks URLs Personal Folders Public Folders Sam Outlook NewsEdge Customers Presentation Reporting Search Synchronize custom update 81 – 60.15 S&P 500 1347.35 -9.59 NASDAQ 2626.49 –65.91 MSFT 88.44 –1.81 LU 63.81 –3.31 House boxes in Senate on tax cuts Woodstock ’99 ends on a sour note Reform Party veers away from Perot Critical Messages Message From Agenda Ite ms for Bu siness Leaders Kevi n Kenn edy Coming to Mexico? Carol Phillips HR Benefits Update Kevin Kennedy Upcoming Far East Trip Carol Phillips VP announcement Megan Sherman My Calendar Traffic Weather Seattle US Satellite Europe Pacific S.America Corporate Reporting Chart Pivot Map Data… Tools Platforms Desktop Hardware Entertainment Desktop Applic ations 0 50000 100000 Sum of Actual Sum of Plan The purpose of a digital dashboard is to enable knowledge workers to better focus on their key business priorities and make more informed decisions. Knowledge workers are employees whose fundamental task is analyzing and manipulating information. In its simplest form, a digital dashboard is nothing more than a very dynamic Web page that is running within Outlook 2000. Normally, a digital dashboard is a customized Outlook Today page. There are a number of decisions that need to be made, however, about what information to include on the page, how users will interact with the information offline, and what level of customization will be available to users. It is highly recommended that development begin with a single Web page hosting a limited amount of information before more detailed solution is undertaken. Introducing the Information Section The term information section is used to describe the filtered, robust, and dynamic information that is displayed in a digital dashboard. The technical way in which that information is rendered can be a Microsoft ActiveX ® control, an Active Server Page (ASP), or an Extensible Markup Language (XML) data feed. The important element of an information section is that it presents information in a concise fashion, focusing on what the user needs, and that it be dynamic, so that the user can access information in greater detail (drill down). These information sections can come from a wide variety of sources — personal information from Outlook 2000 or sales data from a Microsoft SQL Server ™ version 7.0 data warehouse. Slide Objective To present a sample digital dashboard. Lead-in Digital dashboards enable knowledge workers to interact with custom business information. Note 4 Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard Capabilities of Digital Dashboards  Access to Any Information Source  Integration of Information  Interactivity with Information Digital dashboards offer the following capabilities. Access to Any Information Source Digital dashboard solutions build on an organization’s existing business systems by pulling multiple data sources together in one place. Information from virtually any source—former systems, Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5, SQL Server 7.0, or Web servers—can be made accessible through a digital dashboard for online and offline use. Integration of Information A digital dashboard integrates personal, team, corporate, and external information, enables learning between knowledge workers and collaboration among teams, filters corporate information, and provides a dynamic repository of external information. Interactivity with Information A digital dashboard provides interactive capabilities that enable knowledge workers to quickly obtain a more in-depth perspective of business conditions. High-level sales and competitive data can be further analyzed in relevant business reports and applications, allowing knowledge workers to interact directly with the data using Office PivotTable ® Web components or Microsoft Excel with SQL Server integration. A digital dashboard can also incorporate tools such as Microsoft NetMeeting ® conferencing software, which allows people to share applications and collaborate over the intranet or Internet, and Microsoft Windows Media ™ player. Slide Objective To list the capabilities of digital dashboards. Lead-in Digital dashboards offer access to any information source, integration of information, and interactivity with information. Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard 5 Integrating Web Content  Integrating ActiveX Controls  Many freely available ActiveX controls can be used  Integrating Dynamic Web Pages  Dynamically generated Web pages can be included within a frame or Iframe  Integrating Dynamic Web Content  Low-bandwidth, dynamic Web content from a URL can be included Because a digital dashboard is a Web page, adding Web content is simple. The following sections include some ideas for incorporating useful external content. Be careful to not include too much dynamic content in broadly distributed digital dashboards. The demands on network bandwidth can become quite high if, for example, 10,000 people are all receiving similar feeds from the Internet. Integrating ActiveX Controls There are a number of freely available ActiveX controls that you can incorporate into a digital dashboard. For example, you can incorporate the MSN ™ Investor Ticker Control, for which the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) code is quite simple. <object classid="clsid:D3E12F51-0795-11d2-91CC-00C04FA31C90" codebase="http://fdl.msn.com/public/investor/v6//ticker.cab#version=6,1998,1031,3" height="34" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 8px" type="application/x-oleobject" width="100%"> </object> Integrating Dynamic Web Pages The only way to include dynamically generated Web pages, such as ASPs, is in a frame or Iframe. Iframes are generally very useful tools for quickly integrating Web content into digital dashboards. Be aware, however, that each Iframe creates a new instance of the base Microsoft Internet Explorer engine, referred to as the Trident engine. While a few Iframes are not a significant issue, it is not a good idea to base your entire page on Iframes. Slide Objective To list the types of Web content you can integrate within a digital dashboard. Lead-in You can integrate Web content into your digital dashboard by using ActiveX controls, dynamic Web pages, and dynamic Web content. Note 6 Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard Integrating Dynamic Web Content A common technique used in building digital dashboards is the including low- bandwidth dynamic content. Many Web sites produce content that is updated on a regular basis, but the content always resides at the same Uniform Resource Locator (URL). Traffic cameras are a good example of this. Even though the picture updates roughly every five minutes, it is always located at the same URL (such as http://TraffCam.gov/camera10.gif). [...]... in a digital dashboard Which information sections are available After analyzing users’ needs, the group that creates the digital dashboard can produce a base digital dashboard with a set of information sections from which users can choose Some information sections may always be present because they provide strategically critical information Which information sections are displayed Because digital dashboards... synchronization profiles that are used for varying connections, you may consider including an easy-to-find synchronization button available on the digital dashboard 14 Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard Deploying a Digital Dashboard Slide Objective To list the distribution choices and methods for digital dashboards Lead-in You can distribute a digital dashboard from a Web server or as a dll file... PivotTable and PivotChart™ Wizard allows you to quickly connect to a data source, and once you have the page looking just as you would like, you can save it as an interactive Web page that is still connected to the original datasource Once you have such a Web page, creating a nugget on your dashboard is as simple as copying and pasting the HTML into your dashboard page Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard. .. information on a digital dashboard can be done at role level in a centralized manner 9 10 Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard What is shown inside each information section The most important, and difficult, customization will take place inside the information sections themselves It is best to have this level of customization maintained within the information resource itself Because a digital dashboard is.. .Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard 7 Connecting to Business Data Slide Objective To outline the topics associated with incorporating dynamic business data on a digital dashboard Lead-in You can use the tools of Office 2000 and SQL Server 7.0 to incorporate dynamic business data on a digital dashboard Using Office Web Components DataSource Control Spreadsheet Component PivotTable Component Chart... store local user preferences Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard 11 Enabling Offline Use Slide Objective To outline the topics associated with enabling a digital dashboard for offline use Lead-in Robust offline applications can be created by using these techniques Integration Enables Offline Capabilities Taking collaborative applications offline Taking Internet and Intranet Content Offline Taking... Dashboard Personalization and Customization Slide Objective To outline the topics associated with personalizing and customizing a digital dashboard Lead-in A digital dashboard can deliver information tailored to the needs or roles of individual users Types of Customization Which information sections are available Which information sections are displayed What is shown inside each information section Active... client-side scripting can slow Outlook Today start-up performance.) Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard 15 Using a reg File to Point Users to a Shared Digital Dashboard If you are distributing your digital dashboard through a Web page, you can simply point users to that page by providing them with a reg file The reg file is simply a text file that contains code similar to the following sample REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Outlook\Webview\mailbox]... version 3.0, that are capable of providing tailored experiences to end users Types of Customization There are a number of different levels at which customization should be considered in digital dashboards While a user could create a personal digital dashboard, most digital dashboards are built and distributed by an informationtechnology (IT) group The following are levels of customization that can be considered... can be saved to the file system, a file share, or a Web server They are created by using Excel and can be viewed by using the Office Web Components These cubes provide the same ability to view detailed data that underlies summary data that a user might have when online However, users do not have to be connected to a database when using cube slices Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard 13 Creating Offline . Creating a Digital Dashboard    Creating a Digital Dashboard  Introduction to Digital Dashboards  Capabilities of Digital Dashboards  Integrating Web. Manager: Mary Larson Group Product Manager: Robert Stewart Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard iii Instructor Notes Module 8: Creating a Digital Dashboard