BLOG OF AN ESCAMOTEUR

After the feedback to my post I made some important decisions for the further development of the Outlook Show Manager. I did a lot of preparations for future extensions and flexibility at this stage, to make further steps easier even if this work can not be seen yet at the surface of the application.

Now one month later I have the first version of Outlook Show Manager running on my laptop and I’m already using it to manage my bookings, even if there is a lot of functionality missing yet. As I leverage the functions of Outlook for storing the data I don’t have to fear that I corrupt it easily while continuing with the development.

Now here is  the new Dialog for entering  a business opportunity.

The most important change is the new contact fields. I extended them with useful fields, but the real improvement is that while entering this contact fields and saving the BO, an Outlook Contact is automatically created and linked to the BO. So if you need additional information you can put them in that Contact Item.

This way you have all the flexibility without the need to go through several dialogs for entering a BO. Changes in the Contact or in the contact fields of this dialog are automatically updated.  (Soon there will also be a button to select an existing contact.)

To enter the date of the BO you only have to click on the Date field.  But instead of just opening a standard date picker you get a full calender view so you can easily check if the requested date is still free:

To enter the BO date you only have to select a time range and hit Enter twice, the appointment is stored with the BO-Title as subject and the calender view closes itself.

I really have to say that it’s fun and quick now to enter new BOs. You only have to provide the data you have and need at an early stage. The program does not demand from you to fill every field if you don’t like to.

You may already have realized that there is a new Toolbar for our application. This way it doesn’t matter in which Outlook View you are when you need to enter a new BO.  Clicking Show Business Opportunities switches to the BO view where you can see all entered BOs:

Currently this is a pretty basic view. More sophisticated views will be added while the program evolves. (I hope you understand that I blacked out my rates )

As I’m working together with an agency that need to know when I’m available I added the function Update Web. This creates a text file from the BO view above and automatically uploads it on my web server:

Not very pretty YET but it does it purpose.

So far for the current development. I hope you now get a feeling how powerful this solution could be one day. As soon as I have a working setup file I will get back to you and ask for volunteers for beta testing.

Related posts:

1. First Screenshot of Outlook Show Manager I need your feedback
2. Outlook Show Manager, my vision of a CRM Tool for performing artists
3. What’s in a name II
4. Development Philosophie