I was recently working on a SharePoint workflow project where I had to connect to an exchange infrastructure to manipulate a bunch of calendar and public folder objects. Now since this organization had Exchange 2007 one option was to use the new Web Services that the Exchange has rolled out. This would have been a good solution but I already had a bunch of code in my library (Already Written ;)) that did much of what was requested, but it was all MAPI based!! Doa!
Hmmm…. Dilemma.. I could request that outlook be installed on the SharePoint server where the workflow was going to be installed…. NO WAY. That’s never a good solution, to install client apps on a server rig (well, almost never, there are obviously some cases where we cannot get around something like this)
I could spent a bunch of time researching the Exchange web services API’s (This would take some time)
Or i could install the newly published Microsoft Exchange Server MAPI Client and Collaboration Data Objects 1.2.1. This new download allows you to install the MAPI objects on server gear, without installing the full blown outlook client. Since Exchange 2007, Microsoft has now decoupled the MAPI/CDO API’s into a separate download so you can run MAPI based applications on a server without the full blown outlook client installed.
You can get the new MAPI/CDO 1.2.1 Objects from here
I’m out.