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I'm creating a secure message alternative to email for my organization. We exchange confidential patient information with outside treatment providers. To protect privacy, we cannot use email for this purpose.

Rather than force the users here to use whole new inbox, outbox, and authoring interfaces in addition to the Outlook/Exchange email they're used to, is it possible for me to simply add a "Send Secure" button that will direct their message to my custom service rather than the email server?

Microsoft Outlook With New Button http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/5140/newbutton.gif

I've never created an add-in for an Office application. Is it possible to do this? How should I get started?

Esteban Küber
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Zack Peterson
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  • what do you want to when someone clicks secure? do you want the message to be encrypted? how does the receiver gets to see it? – shahkalpesh Jun 15 '09 at 17:35
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    Upvoted just for the amusing email. – Aric TenEyck Jun 15 '09 at 17:50
  • A "Send Secure" message would be stored in a database and only read from a password-protected web site. The recipient would be emailed only a notification that there's a new, unread message available on that web site. – Zack Peterson Jun 15 '09 at 17:53
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    I hoped someone would appreciate that, Aric. – Zack Peterson Jun 15 '09 at 17:53
  • @ZackPeterson What did you end up doing? – Den Mar 15 '13 at 16:15
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    @Den I abandoned the project. I haven't used the product, but the ShareFile service has an Outlook Plugin that seems to do something similar. http://www.sharefile.com/about/power-tools-outlook-plugin.aspx – Zack Peterson Mar 22 '13 at 17:31

6 Answers6

5

You absolutely can. You can use VSTO to do it. Here is an example of adding a context menu item to folders, but adding a button is very similar exercise.

JP Alioto
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  • adding a button to a toolbar/ribbon might be similarly easy but I have some difficulty believing that inserting a button right between the built-in controls is as well - then again, I haven't ever used VSTO to build addins so far... – Oliver Giesen Jun 15 '09 at 21:34
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I know this doesn't answer you question, but I would argue that you should not do this even if you can. It seems, to me, that this approach just makes it easy to accidentally send sensitive information over regular email. It will be easy for users to accidentally click the regular send button because it is right next to the "send secure" button. Even if you put them on opposite sides of the window from each other, the user is quite likely to click regular send out of habit. Unless you can programatically detect that information is sensitive and needs to be sent securely, I think the users should be forced to use a separate application so that they are conscious of the sensitivity of their communication at all times. Even if you could detect sensitive info automatically (I wouldn't think you could easily) it would be better to keep users in the habit of securing their communication.

Clippy http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/1707/clippy.gif

Zack Peterson
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A. Levy
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    That would be so rare as to be almost unheard-of. Probably no more common than people clicking "reply-to-all" when they mean "reply". :) – Aric TenEyck Jun 15 '09 at 17:50
  • I agree that there are issues, A. Levy. At this point I'm just trying to figure out what's possible and at how easily. – Zack Peterson Jun 15 '09 at 17:56
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    Forget about clicking - the shortcut key for Send is something like Ctrl+Enter; unless you remap that as well, you'll end up with folks triggering it out of habit. And if you DO remap it, you'll frustrate those same people when they go to use their normal email...! – Shog9 Jun 15 '09 at 18:01
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Yes you can do this, by redesigning the outlook Message form in Tools > Forms > Design a Form. There you can select the Message Form and buttons to the message form.

You will have to write some VBA or assign and action on the click event to do your secure send or insert you service URL etc. You can the save and publish the form. User can then select the new "Secure" Message form or you can overwrite the default form in your organisation so that every time a user select new mail they use the form.

Overwrite a default forms:
 Form Design Example:

Also there are many addins for outlook that secure email:

VSTO may also be a way to go, if you design an addin that added a toolbar to the inspector (mail) window that inserted your url to your secure service say via small winform that looked up that patient by name id etc. (there are loads of examples on the net for this)

Marcus

DJo
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76mel
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Sounds like you might be better off creating a custom MAPI Service Provider, and then connecting Outlook to it. That should give you a (relatively) clean programming model to follow without having to worry about messing with the Outlook UI... and also help avoid problems caused by users accidentally clicking the wrong button!

Shog9
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A simpler way could be, sending the message which contains the link to the secured content on your website.

This will avoid the need of creating an addin/accidentally hitting "send" instead of "send secure".

EDIT: I mean, even if you send the email by accident, there won't be anything in it other than some instructions with a link

e.g. myopenid.com/username/patientReport?id=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

When clicked, user could be prompted to log in & see the details.

EDIT2: Yes I know, I am moving away from the topic of creating an outlook addin. But why go a difficult way, when a simpler solution can be derived? :)

DJo
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shahkalpesh
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  • That's the gist of it. But, I want it as automatic and easy-to-use as possible. The message authors needn't worry about the implementation details. – Zack Peterson Jun 15 '09 at 18:08
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Why not catch the BeforeCheckNames event and then display a dialog asking the user if this message contains confidential information?

ChaosFreak
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