I was just reading through Dan Fernandez’s blog and came accross a very interesting article for any of you who work in an environment where MS-Office is prevalent.  Though there are many ways to interface and interact with Outlook with .NET products, here is a very short tutorial which demonstrates how to create Outlook calendar items by using a simple flat file.

The example itself is quite simple, by generating a .vcs file that a user can click on, any web-based application can create calendar items.  Here is a sample of the VCS file format:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20060314T163000Z
DTEND:20060314T173000Z
SUMMARY:Product Launch GO/NOGO
LOCATION:Conference Room – F123, Bldg. 002
DESCRIPTION:The GO/NOGO decidion for the launch of our newest product takes place on Tuesday. Bring all of your action log items, and completed TPS reports with you. Johannes and Louisa will co-chair this meeting.
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

Armed with this knowledge it should become even easier to implement Outlook calendar appointments in your solutions.

Sources: Dan Fernandez’s Blog, IMC RFC 2445