MSAgent Guru

I'm starting a project to place a "VB Guru" in your systemtray using MSAgent (Office Assistant). I'm goin to to use a database of visual basic code i.e. Tips 'n' Tricks..

I want to use the MS Office style Assistant interface where the user can type in a question and the guru would retur all possable matches then allow the user to pick what to display. The problem I'm having (more like a dead stop for now) is that I don't know how to and can't come up with any documentation on putting controls into the agent's ballon. There is a small tutorial (a link to Microsoft) on VB Square but there isn't anyhing to befound there of help. So, has anbody done anything like this know how to or anything....

Thankz in advance

If I find out I'll be sure to post it here....

Yeap know what you mean, the ballon controls al la that friggin clippit character in word/excel. Have been doing MS Agent for some time and have not discovered a way to emulate this little trick, (API call somehow????).

What version of Agent are you using. We are currently using version 2.1. However version 3 is meant to have far more office like interfaces. Still waiting on Mircosoft to indicate when version 3 is available....mustn't have sold enough office 2000 yet.

My advise...wait for version 3. Unless some one else knows a work around.

I'm using 2.0

I supose if the ballon had a seperate handle than the agent it might be possable to get the class name and sub-class it... or maybe even use something like shaped form creater to make your ballon like forms for the times you need an interface. I guess if you are using C++ or visual C++ there are more options exposed????

The C++ guy we employed a couple of days ago had a look at it, could interface to Merlin after a few attempts, but couldn't see any extra properties or methods that vb is unaware of. He claims that this should be the case with ActiveX components.

Have just emailed a guy l know at Microsoft (Oz) who claims to have details regarding Agent 3.0, hopefully that version will resolve your issue. According to him the next verison, if they ever get around to releasing it, will have far more functionality, MS have demonstrated internally but coz a freebee l guess it ain't high priority.

let me know what you find out