I just wrote this up for work, but it seems like the kind of thing that might be useful to others, and that they wouldn't mind me sharing with friends, so I'm posting a copy here too. (Plus, it might be good for future reference, if you know what I mean...)

Introduction

Apparently, there are some people in this world who are are able to perform certain tasks automatically:

• Knowing what time it is.
• Remembering that they have a meeting at a given time in the future.
• Realizing when that time has arrived and actually going to that meeting.

I, personally, am incapable of doing any of these things. So, I rely on tools like Outlook and my Comm / PDA / Smartphone to do them for me. (Well, all but actually going to the meeting. I still have to do that myself, but the Comm does remind me of it.)

Unfortunately, Outlook has this annoying feature (more like a design flaw) that sets the reminder on an incoming event invitation based on the sender's preferences instead of mine, and not alerting me when they differ. So I get an invitation, happily accept it, with every intention of attending, then blithely forget to actually go, because no alert was triggered, because no reminder was on the original invitation.

("But," you ask, "can't you change the reminder settings to whatever you want when you get the invitation?" Yes, yes I can, but I don't remember that earlier. Let's add that one to the list of stuff I can't do:

• Remembering to check the reminder settings of all incoming meeting invitations.

And move on.)
Finally, I've put together a working solution... ( Read more... )