Custom Forms in OWA

[D-Bone]

Ok tech friends, I have a question. Using Exchange 2003 and Outlook Web Access on our network here. Under Public Folders we have a customer list that has contact/network info, etc. I made a custom contacts form to use for this list and it works great locally. However, when someone connects remotely to OWA and views one of the customer entries, it just uses the default contact form, not the custom one. Is there an easy way to make the custom form usable in OWA as well?

[Ghost]

Well, there used to be a form converter for Exchange 5.5 OWA. It doesn't work with the new versions though. The thing you'll want to use is called WSS Forms or Exchange Forms. Most of the info on it out there is for developers who want to write code, but there is some info on using Frontpage to develop the forms. I took the custom code route with Exchange 2000 a while back and it was kind of a pain, but I did get things working. There is a little bit of info that InfoPath Forms supposedly already include a HTML version, so using that for the Forms may work a little easier.

[Ghost]

Here's some more info. The prefered method of custom forms for OWA is to use Exchange Web Forms. For the most part it seems fairly simple, but you have to get your hands dirty with a bit of code. The main documentation is in the Exchange 2003 SDK available here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/exchanchor/htms/msexchsvr_e2k3_sdk.asp

In particular look under Tasks->Key Tasks->Creating Exchange Web Forms and Registering Exchange Web Forms. It gives some examples on how to setup a pretty basic form. You may also want to look at the Building an Exchange Store View section as well, as it controls the page view for multiple items. It would allow you to display some of the custom fields from your forms without having to open each form.