Can I add a custom "Send" button to Outlook?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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