Setting Up the Account Tracking Application | Programming MicrosoftВ® OutlookВ® and Microsoft Exchange 2003, Third Edition (Pro-Developer)

To install the Account Tracking application, you need a machine that has Outlook and at least one Microsoft Office application installed, preferably Excel. You must also have a user account on a Microsoft Exchange Server. We'll step through setting up the Account Tracking application next .

Copying the Account Tracking Folder

First you need to copy the Account Tracking folder from the .pst file included in the companion content to your Public Folders in Exchange. To do this, copy the ExBook.pst file to your local hard drive. Clear the read-only flag for this file. In Outlook, choose Open from the File menu, and then select Outlook Data File. In the Open Outlook Data File dialog box, locate ExBook.pst on your hard drive, select it, and click OK. If you are prompted to convert a non-Unicode store to a Unicode store, accept the conversion. At this point, the file folder named ExBook should appear in your Outlook Folder List. Expand the ExBook file folder to display the Account Tracking folder. Hold down the Ctrl key, and drag and drop the Account Tracking folder to the location in the Public Folder tree where you want the folder to appear. (Pressing the Ctrl key makes a copy of the Account Tracking folder.)

Note	If you do not copy the Account Tracking folder from the ExBook.pst file folder to your Public Folders, the Assign Task To functionality will not work.

Copying the Product Sales Database

Included with the book's sample files is an Access database named Sales.mdb. The application can use this product sales database to retrieve sales and quota information for an account previously entered in the database. The default location for this database is in the root of your C drive. You can change the location by modifying some of the VBScript code in the Account Tracking form. By default, the application does not use the database, but you can change this setting in the VBScript for the form. To configure the Access database, follow these steps:

From the sample code, copy the file named Sales.mdb to your local hard drive and clear its read-only flag.
In the Outlook Public Folders list, select the Account Tracking folder you just copied .
Launch the Account Tracking form by choosing New Account Info from the Actions menu.
From the Tools menu, choose Forms, Design This Form.
From the Form menu, choose View Code.
If you want to use the sales database, in the Global Declaration section, change the line
```
 bUseDatabase = 0 
```
to
```
 bUseDatabase = 1 
```
If you want to change the location of the database, find the Item_Open subroutine. Change the parameter in the line
```
 InitializeDatabase "c:\sales.mdb" 
```
to reflect the location of the database. For example, if the database is located on a file share, you should change the line to
```
 InitializeDatabase "\fileserver\fileshare\sales.mdb" 
```
Note
Although an Access database is used in this sample application, you can also use a Microsoft SQL Server database.
Publish the form to save your changes by opening the Tools menu from the Account Tracking form, pointing to Forms, and then selecting Publish Form.

Setting Permissions on the Folder

After configuring the database, you must set permissions on the folder. You might want to give all users the ability to submit new items to the folder but give only the internal sales teams the ability to read and edit items in the folder. You might also want to create multiple folders for each internal sales team so that each team accesses only its accounts, contacts, and tasks . To set up permissions for the application, right-click on the Account Tracking folder in the folder list and choose Properties. Click on the Permissions tab, and use the menus to set the permissions for the users of the application. Consider using distribution lists to simplify setting permissions for teams of individuals.