Sneaky Microsoft has done it again. I just installed Office 2003 Professional Edition. It has a slick, beautifully crafted user interface. Typical of the Office team’s attention to detail, it has ironed out all kinds of problems with the old product. Word now has a viewer mode that brings up documents in beautiful cleartype text. Outlook has a side-by-side preview window which uses the viewer. And it makes extensive use of semi-transparent windows for new message notifications and so on.
There was a little ditty in the box called Business Contact Manager which bills itself as an add-in to Outlook. Having just struck out on my own, I thought that a contact manager, a la Act, or Goldmine, might be helpful to me. So I installed it.
It didn’t seem to do much. I dragged a few contacts into the Business Contacts Window, and didn’t think much of it. Except that it was darned annoying now because for some reason I couldn’t resolve addresses against my old contact database.
A little while later, trying to shut down some other errant process on my PC, I brought up the task mangler and had a look through the process list. WTF? SQL Server?
And then I had a look at one of my contacts. Every last activity — email, note, appointment, etc made for any contact is being recorded in a SQL server database by Business Contacts Manager. No more filing emails…
What a Godsend! A database behind Outlook!
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
