Question about a Quick Syllabus on Macros/API in OpenOffice

[EbWCO]

I am new to OpenOffice, but I am a power user of Microsoft Office. I have become chairperson of the Board of a very small profit that does not qualify for Microsoft's Nonprofit discount, so of necessity, we have OpenOffice.

I would not classify myself as a full-fledged developer by any stretch, but I have written a decent (100+) number of useful Microsoft VBA subs that I continue to use on a regular basis.

One of the things I found (and very much like) is the idea of having a switchboard that opens standalone forms. I have some other features I would like to develop but I want to start here.

What I am looking for is a "quick syllabus" of what I need to study to pull off the switchboard, and preferably to have the switchboard launch when the user logs into a Windows-based system (currently 8.1, but likely to be 10 soon.)

From there I want to build other features. The second most important would be a way to create a sort of "faux internal email system." My thinking at the moment is to use a Writer form, with a dedicated folder in each user account that would hold messages. What I need is a way to alert me if the user has read (opened) the document. I can see where generating a read-document would be the way to go. I'm just not sure how I would automatically generate a document showing that a different document has been opened.

Any help with identifying relevant topics in OpenOffice and where I can find resources on them is greatly appreciated.

[MTP]

The most comprehensive resource on OpenOffice API that I am aware of (in English) is Andrew Pitonyak's OpenOffice Macros Explained. This 500+ page book is available as a free download from his website http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php. If you happen to read French I'd look into the OpenOffice books by Bernard Marcelly (I don't read French, but his help on these forums is always both highly accessible and knowledgeable so I'd expect the same of his books).

It sounds like you will be working with Base. Databases are notorious for having steep learning curves, and Base in particular is more user-unfriendly than, say, Access.

Base is a powerful piece of software that can certainly do what you want (marking when users open particular documents can be done by writing a macro or possibly an SQL "trigger" depending on how your form is set up), but I would definitely not call the learning curve or setup "quick".