Lunch selections through MS Outlook?
My colleague said they were able to select what food they wanted from lunch, through Outlook. How do you think this would have been possible or setup?
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Hi, bobox00.
There are two really simple ways they could have done this. First, they could use voting buttons. Voting buttons allow the sender to include a list of options with an email. Each person receiving the email can vote for one of those options. The options can be anything you need them to be. The sender could have sent three menu options (e.g. beef with potatoes, chicken with rice, salmon with carrots). The recipients' votes would have indicated their choices. Second, as @Faustulus suggested, they could have included the menu in the body of the message. Each menu item would have a link to a web page that collected each person's choice. The recipients would read through the menu and click on their choice. This approach would take a bit more work to set up, but would give you more flexibility and would allow you to include pictures of the items on the menu.
There are two really simple ways they could have done this. First, they could use voting buttons. Voting buttons allow the sender to include a list of options with an email. Each person receiving the email can vote for one of those options. The options can be anything you need them to be. The sender could have sent three menu options (e.g. beef with potatoes, chicken with rice, salmon with carrots). The recipients' votes would have indicated their choices. Second, as @Faustulus suggested, they could have included the menu in the body of the message. Each menu item would have a link to a web page that collected each person's choice. The recipients would read through the menu and click on their choice. This approach would take a bit more work to set up, but would give you more flexibility and would allow you to include pictures of the items on the menu.
ASKER
Thanks for all comments.
Now, if the restaurant were to send their menu in the shape of a form with checkboxes the method of choosing could be greatly simplified.
Finally, Outlook has a great many form designed for circulation. Like a Task, for example, which the receiver can accept, decline or ignore. Behind these forms is functionality particular to Outlook that facilitates feedback to the sender. This functionality can be harnessed to custom forms.
So, to answer your question, they probably have a custom form with checkboxes on their menu item which they insert into a system that responds to the sender. The user clicks his choice and Send.
So far so well. I do hope my having volunteered this analysis doesn't expose me to the answer, "Since you know so well, do it". I'm the consultant. I don't know how to do the job. :-) But if you cut it into smaller pieces I might try, and there are probably a lot of experts here even better qualified to succeed, especially if you chose to post in the rubric for Outlook.