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Creating POOM items using PIE Web
pages
The ability to manipule Pocket Outlook
items such as Contacts, Appointments and Tasks from an eVB
app is a very cool feature. Once the various items are added
into the outlook database, your app could filter and display
those items based on the user's preferences, or allow the
user to quickly find a specific item. However, the process
of creating a new outlook item is usually a manual process.
The user typically selects "New" and then tediously
enters the various text data of the item using the very
small SIP keyboard or by writing on the screen. This is
not only a time consuming task, but it is prone to errors.
A "Contact" item is particularly
time consuming to enter. You typically end up entering a
company name, first and last name, telephone number and
an email address before saving it.
Wouldn't it be nice to have all of a
contacts' data automatically entered into your Pocket PC
simply by clicking on a link of a webpage? Well, that's
exactly what I am about to show you how to do.
I could have designed an eVB app to
accomplish this, but it would require each user to first
install the eVB app on their Pocket PC before they can start
adding contacts. This method would also has the disadvantage
of requiring the user to install continuous program updates
on their Pocket PC to facilitate new features or fix bugs
with an existing version.
The method I chose does not require
any special software to be installed on the user's Pocket
PC, so virtually any Pocket PC can immediately utilize my
technique to add new contacts right out of the box. In addition,
new features and capabilities can be easily added without
a single change to the user's Pocket PC.
The key to my technique is PIE's support
of JavaScript. Even though I have never programmed in JavaScript
before, it was not too difficult to understand because of
a few key similarities it has with Basic.
Let's now dive into the details of
my technique…
Because JavaScript is a scripting language,
it has many of the same capabilities as VBScript, including
the key ability to reference ActiveX Objects. Luckily, the
ActiveX control 'PIMSTORE.DLL' is included in every Pocket
PC's ROM. This was a critical factor in allowing Pocket
PC's to use my technique out-of-the-box (without installing
any special software).
NOTES:
1) A download
which includes more info and example code for using POOM
can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/developer/downloads/poomsdk.asp
2) The code below was reported
to work on first-generation Casio, HP and iPaq Pocket PC's.
However, it appears not to work on the newer Pocket PC's
2002. I am waiting for the PC 2002 upgrade for my test 3135
mono iPaq so I can find out what's happening. It is probably
something simply like a slight syntax change such as removing
the "()" after calls such as "pol.logon"
- which desktop IE requires to work.
The first step in creating a new pocket
outlook Contact item, is to create an instance of the Pocket
Outlook Object Module (POOM). This is accomplished from
within JavaScript as shown below:
var pol;
pol = new ActiveXObject("pocketoutlook.application");
Next, we need to log into the Pocket Outlook
Datastore:
pol.logon();
Then, we simply create a reference to
a new Contact item:
contact = pol.createitem(2);
Set the various fields of the new contact
item:
contact.CompanyName = "deVBuzz.com";
contact.Email1Address = "derek@devbuzz.com";
contact.FirstName = "Derek";
contact.LastName = "Mitchell";
contact.webpage = "http://www.devbuzz.com/pie";
contact.body = "deVBuzz.com is dedicated to …";
Save it and log off:
contact.save();
pol.logoff();
The lines of code above represent the
raw code of my technique. But to be truly useful, it needs
to reside in a web page/HTML file. Below is a complete HTML
file incorporating my technique and even a little extra
code to check to see if the contact already exists in the
user's database, so it won't add a duplicate entry.
<head><title>Poom Test</title></head>
<body topmargin="0">
<p align="center"><b>Creating
Outlook Items via<br>Pocket Internet Explorer<br>
Webpages</b></p>
<p align="center"> </p>
<p align="center">By John Cody<br>and
deVBuzz.com </p><hr>
<p align="center"><font
size="3"><a href="#" onclick="addcontact()"><br>Click
Here<br>
</a>To add <b>deVBuzz.com<br>
</b>to your Contact list.
</font></p></body>
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