I am getting to know OneNote now that I am a laptop user. It has been very useful in meetings and very good for organizing my thinking/working, but I learned a couple new things last week that are worth noting:
You can capture audio as a note. I am finding this very useful when listening to .NetRocks shows and I want to save a small part of it that I can get back to quickly. I can add my own text comments right there as well as relevant URLs, etc. Just change the audio input source to Wave Out Mix in the Options dialog box.
You can capture screenshots into a note (Insert Menu -> Screen Clipping). This is only in OneNote Service Pack 1. I am currently in the design phase of an application and this is very handy. I can take a screenshot into the note and then share the note in meetings with the team. You can even do this when OneNote is closed using the OneNote icon in the system tray.
As a small project, we were tasked with creating a data feed from a text report genereated by JD Edwards (not OneWorld, an older version) and our application. Instead of going the FTP and text file parsing route, I decided to try our first venture into a web service. Since the JD Edwards group were using Excel 2000 to manipulate the report before sending it to our system, I figured a VBA macro could send the data for them, using the XMLHTTP object.
‘Notes: Using late binding so the project won’t need explicit references ‘ Using MSXML 2.5 object model to be sure it will run on most PCs Public Sub SendDataToEnCore() Dim oXML As Object Dim oDom As Object Dim oNode As Object Dim sXML As String Dim nResult As Integer Dim sResponse As String
On Error GoTo Handler Set oXML = CreateObject(“Microsoft.XMLHTTP”) Application.Cursor = xlWait ‘Change the cursor to a wait cursor Application.ScreenUpdating = False ‘Stop screen redraw With oXML ‘Call the service, it only takes one parameter, the XML string .Open “POST”, & _ “http://test.com/Redeployment.asmx/Redeployment_Update“, False
‘The following line is necessary for the web service to recognize the post .setRequestHeader “Content-Type”, “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”
Application.StatusBar = “Waiting for a response…” ‘Create XML is a function that loops the spreadsheet building an XML string .Send CreateXML End With
sResponse = oXML.responseText With Application .Cursor = xlDefault .StatusBar = “” .ScreenUpdating = False End With Set oDom = CreateObject(“MSXML.DOMDocument”) oDom.loadXML (sResponse)
If oDom.hasChildNodes Then ‘Display the resulting message from the web service Set oNode = oDom.documentElement.firstChild nResult = MsgBox(oNode.Text, vbInformation, “EnCore Data Transfer”) Else ‘No response at all MsgBox (“The JDE upload failed. Please contact Development for assistance.”) End If Set oXML = Nothing Set oDom = Nothing Set oNode = Nothing Exit Sub Handler: With Application .Cursor = xlDefault .StatusBar = “” .ScreenUpdating = False End With MsgBox Err.Description Set oXML = Nothing Set oDom = Nothing Set oNode = Nothing End Sub
So far this has worked well for us. One of the issues we encountered was URLEncoding the XML string before sending it. Otherwise, it just won’t parse properly on the web service end. Here is an abbreviated version of the web service function that is called by the above Excel VBA function.
Public Function Redeployment_Update(Byval sInput As string) As String
Dim dt As DataTable dim n as Integer
sInput = cstr(sInput)
n = sInput.Length If n <= 0 Then return “File contains no data” End If
‘ Load the input XML string into a DataTable dt = LoadDataTable(sInput)
Dim drCurrent As DataRow For Each drCurrent In dt.Rows ProcessRow(drCurrent) ‘Our custom function to parse a row next
return “File received OK. Characters Received=” & n
