Know when not to use forms. Outlook 2007 form creation can give you the capability to customize e-mail messages, meeting requests, and other Outlook 2007 items, but if existing forms provide the functionality you need, it is easier and more effective to use the existing forms. When you consider creating a new form, start by asking "Is the functionality I need already present in an existing form?" Consider that in addition to the time needed to create a custom form, there are distribution logistics (how you get the form to all who would need it), as well as training needed to enable people to effectively use the new form.

When you are communicating to customers, vendors, and others outside your organization, you’ll need to determine whether they are using Outlook 2007 (with Rich Text Format [RTF] support enabled) or some other e-mail application. For Outlook 2007 forms to work, the recipient must also be using Outlook 2007 as an e-mail client and must have RTF support.

Keep forms simple but comprehensive. Once you have decided that a new form is necessary, evaluate the information that you need the form to display, transmit, or gather, and then limit the form information to the minimum data required to fulfill your operational or organizational needs. You can create a custom form with multiple pages containing an exhaustive array of fields, yet the complexity of using such a form could easily outweigh any hoped-for benefits. Keep in mind that each custom form you create is intended to facilitate the communication of information. The easier it is for people to use the custom form to exchange information, the more likely it is that people will use the form, and thus the more value it will have for your organization.

Consider a custom form created to enhance customer relationship management by including 15 fields of concise contact information, key project assessment, and a project status summary vs. a custom form that includes five pages containing 200 fields of exhaustive contact information, step-by-step project notes, milestones and timelines, equipment reserved, travel time, technical assessments, customer evaluation, and so on. The first option with 15 fields is much more likely to be used. When you actually have a need to gather 200 fields’ worth of information, you’ll want to consider subdividing the data into related sets and then creating separate forms for each set.

Use user-defined fields to store information not included by default in Outlook. Although Outlook 2007 contains fields for the data it uses in contacts, e-mail, meeting requests, tasks, and so on, there are invariably additional pieces of information that your organization could benefit by having included that are not part of the Outlook 2007 default field set. Consider additions to the meeting form that could be useful when you’re scheduling meetings with coworkers. For example, to identify who will be leading the meeting, you could add a Presenter field to the custom meeting request form. Likewise, you might consider adding Food Preferences and Food Allergies fields to a custom appointment form for those appointments with clients or staff that involve dining out or food being brought in or catered.

You might want to add information in your contacts list that isn’t shared but that assists you in working with others or relating to their personal interests. You could, for example, create a custom contact form to enable you to track the specialized knowledge or favorite sports of each of the people in your contacts list. Then when you want to find a coworker, for example, who just happens to know how IPv6 actually works, you can search on IPv6 and display the names of every person in your contacts list who is fluent in IPv6. (Searching on user-defined fields requires you to select the Query Builder and then add your custom form and fields to the query criteria.)