ARrrgh! Darn you outlook! Obey my bidding!

February 7, 2006 4:08 PM

I just started a new position in my company as the IT Support guy. One of the projects we are working on, is getting away from people submitting paper tech requests, and to using a outlook template that everyone can just pop open to email us a standard request. We have the form working the way we want. It automatically emails my boss and I with the information they fill out, but when I fill out what I did to fix it, and try to forward it or reply to it so my boss has a record of me completing the task, it completely borks the formatting.

Here is what its doing. When I forward it, it acts like an original copy of the form, but with the original persons message shoved in the message area. If I reply to it, it just loses all of its formatting and just goes as a plain text email with bits and pieces of the form in the plain text.
How can I make outlook use a form persistantly throughout a chain of emails? Ideally I would be able to append my notes to the message and shoot it off to my boss. Failing that, how can I properly forward or reply to a templated email?
Anyone else ever experience a similar problem? Is there a easier solution I am overlooking?

posted by JonnyRotten to computers & internet (8 comments total)

JonnyRotten - I hate to deviate from what you're trying to acheive but have you considered using a support ticketing system instead? You can still create the reports and statistics you require - it might be worth checking out OTRS and putting it on a Linux box (Ubuntu supports it, it does need a little configuration to help it along). I think there is a Windows port too.

I think in the long term it's much better for tracking historical problems and organising it as the solution is dedicated to support.
posted by rc55 at 4:13 PM on February 7, 2006

Hi Jonny.

My old company used Outlook forms for the same reasons (new user requests, move requests, etc.)

And it always looses the formatting.

Know what else sucks about it?

- the moment that someone in your group that gets the e-mail upgrades to a new version of Office, it totally screws up the form for everyone. There is a workaround (a registry hack, as I recall), but it took us months to find and we all had to do it regularly. (This happened during the Office XP upgrade and Office 2003.)

- you can't easily reply to the message.

- Mac users can't use the form at all.

- it is a pain in the ass to edit the form if you need a new field.

- OWA users can't use it.

So, I'd suggest, instead of using the crappy Outlook forms, look into a tracking system as rc55 suggests.
posted by k8t at 4:39 PM on February 7, 2006

Look into Request Tracker. It's what we use at work for tech support stuff, and its good. It's free, and a million times better than our old system of "print out the ticket and don't loose the paper."
posted by adamwolf at 5:08 PM on February 7, 2006

With Request Tracker, can the users submit their own requests for support? or do they need to be entered in by the tech? Right now what we are trying to set up is what k8t is saying...
I guess worst case scenerio they use the form to submit their request, then I enter it.. But I would love a fully hands off submitting system..
posted by JonnyRotten at 6:19 PM on February 7, 2006

M$oft Sharepoint can be setup to faciliate deliver of trouble tickets to the appropriate authorities.
posted by AllesKlar at 9:10 PM on February 7, 2006

Slipstick.com used to have a deep archive of resources back in the day when I was involved in Outlook-centred dev, in case you don't know about it already.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:39 PM on February 7, 2006

Outlook forms blow. They really do. There are dozens of good trouble-ticket systems out there. Do some research on those and find one that suits your needs. Outlook forms are useful for some things (like print request forms). But they create more problems than they solve for a problem like this one.
posted by wheat at 6:46 AM on February 8, 2006

Take a look at Liberum Help Desk. It's free and feature rich. We've tied it into our active directory, and it works great. You can customize fields, etc. Also has a knowledge base for users or techs to reference back to previous solutions. Hope this helps.
posted by johnd101 at 9:48 AM on February 8, 2006