Chapter 4. Whole Solutions

So far we have explored unconventional uses of Outlook’s individual components and we have utilized the business example of "Our Company" to demonstrate:

• Staff records: Recording and evaluating staff leave

• A vehicle pool: Recording and monitoring vehicle details, servicing, etc. and linking to users

• Suppliers: Organizing their records into an invaluable business directory

• Taxi booking records that could be applied to other services

In this way, we have been developing an Outlook solution for Our Company, but this solution is not quite complete, there is more that we can do for Our Company.

In this chapter, we will complete the solution for Our Company, integrating various Outlook and Office components, and will also explore another ‘whole solution’, a School‑based example that we haven’t yet introduced.

Our Company Solution

We will create a scenario involving both the Outlook and Office components.

Meeting Room Management

Meeting room bookings are commonly managed using...

Our Company Solution

We will create a scenario involving both the Outlook and Office components.

Meeting Room Management

Meeting room bookings are commonly managed using a separate calendar, and these reservations may be for external organizations as well as for internal groups. The calendar in which these bookings are recorded will resemble an appointments calendar except that the items will refer to the rooms in which the meetings are being held rather than the meetings themselves. When more than one meeting is taking place in different rooms and at the same time, concurrent entries are inevitable and acceptable. A simplified and small portion of such a Meeting Rooms Calendar might look something like the following:

This view provides a clear image of what is happening in the meeting rooms over a short period of time. However, a schedule of meeting room activity over a greater period of time and with more detail about who booked the room, the revenue due from external bookings, etc. would...

Our School Solution

We are now going to create another scenario in Outlook that will incorporate and link more of its components. The Our School Solution will contain separate Contacts folders for students, study subjects, teachers, and classrooms. There will be a separate Calendar for the classes in each subject, a Tasks folder for distributing assignments and monitoring their progress, a Journal folder containing student progress reports and a Notes folder for recording detentions etc.

These items will be linked to the students’ contact records so that the Activities tab will show the classes they have attended, their detention record, the progress of their assignments and will have a direct link to their progress reports.

We shall begin by creating four separate Contacts folders.

Creating the Students Contacts Folders

1. 1. Begin by creating new categories for each student class, e.g. 3a, 3b, etc.

2. 2. Then create a new Contacts folder named Students and a new subfolder with the title of the...

Summary

This book has gradually revealed the untapped power of Outlook’s individual components, and in this final chapter, we have brought these components together to create effective procedures for managing information without third-party programs or programmers.

These final interactive solutions emphasize the importance of acknowledging Outlook as a whole application and utilizing the interdependence of its parts.

These complete solutions also demonstrate Outlook’s outstanding capabilities as an unmitigated information manager.