Outlook tasks standards

[Kyle123]

Bit of an obscure one - but there are plenty of people here with random knowledge

Does anybody know if outlook supports any open formats for tasks? I can create iCals for appointments, but outlook doesn't (as far as I can tell) support vToDo.

I want to programmatically create tasks and since the code for running this will be on a server, initializing a com object isn't an option.

In short does anyone know if it is possible to email a task without using Exchange Web Services?

Ta muchly

[ragulduy]

I believe that the RDOobject from http://www.dimastr.com/redemption/RDOMail.htm has an import method that will convert vToDo into Outlook tasks.

[Kyle123]

Thanks for your answer

I've come across redemption before; as I understand it, all the users would require it installing, and a copy of Outlook. That's not something that's workable I'm afraid, rolling that out to all users will be painful and we've got a substantial number tat use web mail, so I don't think it would work.

Have I got the wrong end of the stick?

[ragulduy]

Yes, I had envisioned sending out vToDo task and the user having redemption installed to be able to import the task when it arrived.

Using CDO looks to be a bit of a mess but it might be do-able. I found reference to things like:
.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/outlookmessageclass") = "IPM.TaskRequest"
as a property of the CDOMessage object. Not sure how to actually get it to work but these sites may help:
www.cdolive.com/cdo10p2.htm
which has a list of the various properties (the task-specific ones are about halfway down)
and
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/...859-1&header=1
which has a description on how to get it to work...

[Kyle123]

Thanks

That looks f**king nasty I was hoping there'd be an open standard like ical - good ol' Microsoft eh?

I might tick with the calander option, that way it's not limited to Outlook at least

Cheers

Kyle

[ragulduy]

Yeah, I had a quick look through it then swiftly deleted it from my internet history