Invantive Estate for Outlook is an add-in for Microsoft Outlook. It brings the subjects of Invantive Estate into Outlook and connects the Outlook calendar and contacts with the hours and the persons of Invantive Estate. The add-in shows the same [[Screens|screens]] as Invantive Estate for Windows, in a form region or in a window of its own. The add-in adds a tab "Invantive Estate" to the ribbon of Outlook. Its functions are also available from the context menu when the setting "Show in context menu" is on. ## Logging On When Outlook starts with the add-in installed, a log-on window appears. It asks for the user name, the password and the connection. The user name and the password are case sensitive. "Save password" remembers the password and "Connect automatically" starts the add-in without the window the next time. ## Settings The settings of the add-in have, among others, these fields: - "Use Add-In" turns the add-in on or off. Restart Outlook to make the change active. - "Get settings from" names the location of the connection file. - "Register outgoing email" registers outgoing emails in Invantive Estate when the subject of the email holds a process number, written as `[t` followed by the number and `]`, for example `[t307]`. - "Show in context menu" shows the functions of the add-in in the context menu of Outlook. The add-in can be combined with Microsoft Exchange. Administrative employees can then register hours for other employees, and a user has the same calendar and contacts on every PC. ## Registering Hours From the Calendar Hours are registered as appointments in the Outlook calendar. Two things are needed before they can be synchronised: - A category on the appointment, which Invantive Estate links to a type of labour. A category that is not linked to a type of labour gives a message when the calendar is synchronised. - An attribute: the project or process the hours belong to. The function "Assign Association" opens a window with the tabs "Recent Items", "Projects" and "Processes", each with a search filter. The tab "Processes" shows only the open processes of the user by default. The tab "Timesheets" lists all categories of the messages and appointments in Outlook. A category that should not take part in the timesheet processing is moved to the right-hand column. The function "Update Calendar" does three things: - It sends the hours worked for projects in the calendar to the hour administration of Invantive Estate. - It adds hours registered in Invantive Estate that are not in the calendar yet. - It passes changes made on either side to the other side. The window "Hour Registration Overview" appears afterwards, with per day the hours worked, the hours to work according to the working schedule, and the remainder. Hours do not have to be entered twice. See [[Invantive Estate/Concepts/Hours|Hours]]. ## Planning The function "Schedule" assigns future hours of the user or of colleagues to processes. The window shows the open processes, weighted by their impact and by how long they have been open. For the selected process it shows: - the required skills, taken from the process; - the qualified persons, with "Matching", the percentage of the required skills that the person has, and "Performance", the level of the person compared to the required level. "Schedule process here" on the context menu of a calendar then creates an appointment with the process description and code and the type of labour for planned hours. Planned hours are saved in Invantive Estate directly. ## Contacts The function "Update Relationships" updates the contacts in Outlook with the persons and organisations of Invantive Estate. The choices are to update all, update the existing contacts only, or add new contacts only. At most one thousand contacts are transferred, based on how intensively they are used. The option to replace contacts overwrites changes made in Outlook. ## Search "Search" finds projects, processes, persons, organisations and other subjects. A search on documents or texts uses the SQL operator `contains`. The characters `%` and `_` in a search text stand for any string and for exactly one character. A search for `Maas%eik` finds both "Maas aan de eik" and "Maaseik". ## Other Platforms The manual describes an approach for using the add-in with Outlook on Mac OS X. The calendar of Gmail can be linked to Outlook with a separate procedure. Neither is covered here.