Visual Studio Tools Add Outlook Support

A prerelease version of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office (VSTO) enables developers to use the .NET Framework and .NET languages to build smart client solutions that connect back-end systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM) applications, to Outlook information, such as e-mail, contacts, and calendars. However, Outlook extensions are more complex to build and develop than Word or Excel solutions, and overlap among competing Microsoft smart client technologies may confuse IT planners.

Connects E-Mail with Business Applications

VSTO is an edition of Visual Studio that enables developers to use the .NET Framework and languages such as C# and VB.NET to build extensions to Word, Excel, InfoPath, and now Outlook. These extensions support Microsoft’s vision of “smart client” applications built on top of Office that take advantage of local processing power and storage but that communicate with server-based back ends to exchange and manipulate data, typically using XML as the data interchange format. For example, a smart client Outlook application might allow a sales person to take an e-mail from a customer and look up the customer’s data in a CRM application without having to use a separate CRM client application, thereby allowing the sales person to respond more quickly and accurately.