Reusing Outlook Web Access

One of the great things about the Web Storage System and Outlook Web Access is that it lets you customize the client without advanced programming by either using WSS Forms, which we'll look at momentarily, or simply, adding some parameters to the URL you pass to OWA. In this section, we'll take a quick look at the most important parameters you can pass to OWA to implement the functionality you want. Table 20-1 lists these parameters.

Table 20-1: Most Common Parameters for Customizing OWA

Command	Supported Parameters	Description
Cmd=	Navbar	Displays only the left-hand navigation of OWA, including the Outlook bar, Outlook icons, and the folder list.
	Contents	Displays only the right-hand contents of OWA without the navigation bar.
	New	Creates a new item in the folder.
	Options	Displays the Options page.
	Open	Opens an item for reading. Be careful because e-mail messages end in .eml . If you pass just the subject of the e-mail message without the trailing .eml, OWA will not be able to find the item. A page-not-found error will then be returned.
	Preview	Works with an item in Exchange to display the preview pane rendition of the item.
	Edit	Opens an item for editing.
	Reply , ReplyAll , Forward	Performs the specific operation on the item.
	SaveItem	Saves the item. Used most commonly with WSS Forms.
View=	A string that specifies a view in the folder ”for example, " By Conversation Topic" , " Daily" , or " Monthly"	Shows the items in the folder using the view you specify. The view name is case sensitive.
M=	A number that corresponds to a month	The month value you want to display. Only use this parameter with a calendar folder.
D=	A number that corresponds to a day	The day value you want to display. Only use this parameter with a calendar folder.
Y=	A number that corresponds to a year	The year value you want to display. Only use this parameter with a calendar folder.

The Training application takes advantage of the Cmd=Contents , the View= , and the date semantics, as in M= , D= , and Y= . For example, this URL from the Training application shows a calendar-type public folder with a monthly view, without the navigation bar (see Figure 20-1): http://<server>/<pfpath>/?Cmd=Contents&View=Monthly&D=15&M=4&Y=2003 .

Figure 20-1: Showing a calendar-type public folder without the navigation bar

You can take these URL parameters and use them as hyperlinks or even as sources for frames within your applications. This extensibility of OWA allows you to quickly add Web pages, such as calendaring pages, without having to write a single line of code.