What is it?

This Plug-In - Chord - is designed for using a project and group status stream within the outlook email client. This is customized plug-in for one existing web based project which is dealing with groups, projects and stream data. Plug-in has been designed to provide a way to check all groups/projects and stream data within outlook environment. Also there is a way to add stream data for any selected project or group. This is not limited to just text entry for stream data, but selected email from outlook can also be attached with stream data. So while looking at stream data for any project or group this will also show an attachment link (if available) with stream.

How it works?

If user first time opens outlook window after plug-in installation then system will ask for web service credentials for that user. User needs to provide his credentials as he uses on website for accessing his data.

When user is done with login, he will be moved to data view section in plug-in where he can see project list, group list and stream data related with selected record.

Stream data shows date of entry , user display name and user image along with stream data text and attachment URL.

There are two types of streams of status data, one is a project steam and the other is a groups stream. List of projects and groups are available in first portion of the plug-in with tabs.

As soon as user clicks on any project or group record from list, it will update that bottom part of plug-in with stream data related with that record.

Technology

This plug-in has been created in .net environment and using .net framework 3.5 with MS-Office components for Office 2007.

Plug-in is based on JSON web service. It?s reading data from JSON web service and calling JSON web service to pass stream data for a new entry.

For storing data locally, plug-in is using XML based configuration files.
No third party control has been used for this plug-in other than provided controls by Microsoft.