...where you might come down on this. Create a browser-based UI,
or embed an application in Outlook
I don't see this as an either/or situation. Why can't you have a web
interface and an outlook interface? In a well architected application
isn't the UI disconnected from the business layer anyway. :-)
I will admit my first thought is to have a browser-based app. Why the
hell would you want to have client code, it's a mess to install and
upgrade, and a disaster to debug. However... I can see the appeal. I
live in Outlook all day long, I converse with clients in outlook all day
long, why shouldn't my CRM/ERP/whatever live in Outlook with me? Plus
the offline capabilities are a nice bonus. Or if I'm trying to compose a
document why use something other than Word? Of if I want to do some
analysis on a bunch of numbers seems like Excel to me.
Speaking from experience on our SaaS product, IRBManager -- we have a
feature where the client can add "notes" onto a number of different
entities. Notes can be simple like "Spoke with ted" or can be complex
rich-text with formatting and spell-check. We field a large number of
support calls that basically go: "Yes, we're in a note and we're trying
to do X and it's not working. We can do X in Word, why can't we do it in
IRBManager." or "We're cutting and pasting 5 pages of text from Word
into a note, complete with tables, fonts and colors, and it's not
looking exactly the same, why not." Now if we just gave them Word... :-)
-Walden
midrange.com
