I work for small production builders putting together their sales and
marketing programs. I want to provide the builders with a simple
software solution to track their potential customers and sales. There
are web based services like buildtopia, and builder 1440 that do this,
but they're expensive and builders are notoriously cheap.

If I develop forms for Outlook specific to builders, for the purpose of
tracking customers, am I over extending what Outlook was intended for?
I was thinking of developing contact forms specific to the home
building industry, and then coupling them with something like Avidian's
Prophet, which could handle the sales tracking.

Any thoughts. Before I committ to a project I want to know it's useful.

You can do that, you could also use a COM addin to provide your own forms
and bypass Outlook custom forms. You might want to look at
www.outlookcode.com for a lot more information about Outlook coding.

I'd also review BCM (Business Contact Manager) for Outlook and see if what
your customer needs can be met by that MS written Outlook addin.

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
http://www.slovaktech.com
Author: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
Reminder Manager, Extended Reminders, Attachment Options
http://www.slovaktech.com/products.htm


wrote in message
ups.com...
I work for small production builders putting together their sales and
marketing programs. I want to provide the builders with a simple
software solution to track their potential customers and sales. There
are web based services like buildtopia, and builder 1440 that do this,
but they're expensive and builders are notoriously cheap.

If I develop forms for Outlook specific to builders, for the purpose of
tracking customers, am I over extending what Outlook was intended for?
I was thinking of developing contact forms specific to the home
building industry, and then coupling them with something like Avidian's
Prophet, which could handle the sales tracking.

Any thoughts. Before I committ to a project I want to know it's useful.

Thank you for the link. I will spend sometime doing some research
there.

Michael

Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook] wrote:
You can do that, you could also use a COM addin to provide your own forms
and bypass Outlook custom forms. You might want to look at
www.outlookcode.com for a lot more information about Outlook coding.

I'd also review BCM (Business Contact Manager) for Outlook and see if what
your customer needs can be met by that MS written Outlook addin.

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
http://www.slovaktech.com
Author: Absolute Beginner's Guide to Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
Reminder Manager, Extended Reminders, Attachment Options
http://www.slovaktech.com/products.htm


wrote in message
ups.com...
I work for small production builders putting together their sales and
marketing programs. I want to provide the builders with a simple
software solution to track their potential customers and sales. There
are web based services like buildtopia, and builder 1440 that do this,
but they're expensive and builders are notoriously cheap.

If I develop forms for Outlook specific to builders, for the purpose of
tracking customers, am I over extending what Outlook was intended for?
I was thinking of developing contact forms specific to the home
building industry, and then coupling them with something like Avidian's
Prophet, which could handle the sales tracking.

Any thoughts. Before I committ to a project I want to know it's useful.