Outlook Custom Tasks

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
  • 1. Configuration
  • 2. Run Configured Tasks
• Configuration
• Troubleshooting
  • Everything suddenly slower when running rules??
  • Error: "UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode characters in position 1-40: character maps to <undefined>"
  • Error: "RuntimeError: Failed to connect to Outlook locally"
• Development
  • Prerequisites (for Developers)
    • Windows
  • Installation (for Developers)
    • Windows
• Notices
• Special Thanks

Installation

TODO

Usage

1. Configuration

Create your own oct.settings.json configuration file to define your rules.

You can use oct.settings.example.json as an example.

To learn about how to write your own oct.settings.json file, see Configuration.

2. Run Configured Tasks

oct # if you're a developer, prefix this with `poetry run`

Configuration

TODO

Troubleshooting

Everything suddenly slower when running rules??

If you're on a laptop or other portable system, your system might have switched over to a power-saving battery profile automatically - this often happens when you take your laptop/device off charge.

Try putting your device on charge to quickly check if that's the source of performance suddenly getting worse.

Depending on your system you should be able to change when different battery profiles are used, but only do this if you know what you're doing. If you really need to run some particularly demanding rules, you may be better off just putting your device on charge.

Error: "UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode characters in position 1-40: character maps to <undefined>"

Unfortunately colorama (the library used to provide coloured output in the terminal) doesn't play nicely with GitBash on Windows.

Try running OCT again from Powershell to see if it resolves the issue.

Error: "RuntimeError: Failed to connect to Outlook locally"

OCT tried asking Outlook to connect locally but we didn't hear back from Outlook.

Try force closing Outlook from Task Manager, then try running OCT again.

Development

Prerequisites (for Developers)

Windows

# NOTE: do not use an elevated (admin) terminal

git clone https://github.com/dp-rp/outlook-custom-tasks.git
cd outlook-custom-tasks

# Install pipx (used to install Poetry in it's own isolated venv)
py -m pip install --user pipx  # if you installed Python using Microsoft Store, replace `py` with `python3`
.\.util-scripts\configure_pipx_windows.ps1

Open a new terminal

# NOTE: do not use an elevated (admin) terminal

# install Poetry (using Pipx)
pipx install poetry  # install Poetry
poetry -V  # test Poetry installed successfully

Installation (for Developers)

NOTE: Ensure you have already installed the prerequisites by following these instructions

The following commands should be ran from the root of your copy of the project repository

Windows

# NOTE: do not use an elevated (admin) terminal

poetry install

Notices

This project is not affiliated with Microsoft or Outlook.

Special Thanks

• Mark Hammond and all the other contributors to the pywin32 library used to connect to Outlook locally