[Zope-dev] Zope and Outlook

[douwe@oberon.nl]

Hi,

I'm not really sure if this is the right place to discuss this, so if you
think I should go somewhere else, let me know.

Zope can be used for a lot of different purposes, but one of them definitely
is groupware and there a lot of people I have been trying to convince to use
Zope prefer Exchange for the simple reason of integration with Outlook.

Now, Outlook is not as closed as you might expect and I have been thinking
about ways to integrate Outlook with Zope. If you could make Outlook
cooperate with Zope in a way that Outlook would create and use public
folders that are stored on Zope, lots of really interesting applications
would be possible, ie like sharing agenda's and having a zope interface to
it too for html rendering and allowing emails to be moved from outlook
directly to Zope.

I see three strategies to achieve this:
1) Add a MAPI server interface to Zope. With a plug in for Outlook like the
one from Bynari Outlook users could then manipulate Zope objects. The MAPI
interface would have to render Zope objects as MAPI folders and messages.

2) Reverse engineer Exchange and implement the relevant MAPI interfaces in
Zope. This would be the most transparent way, but it would also be very
complicated and would depend a lot on the whims of Microsoft as far as
interface changes go, never a very confortable position.

3) Write a plug in a la Bynari's InsightConnector, but then one that doesn't
communicate with MAPI, but directly with Zope, using one of the standard by
Zope supported protocols.

So, I would prefer the third one, but I don't have much of clue how to do
this. Does anybody have any pointers where to start, ie documents or example
implementations. Are there any projects like this already going on?

Any help is appreciated.

Douwe Osinga