Email Structure and Construction

Hello,

I am trying to automate the sending of email to recipients using Outlook, and I need to be able to send stuff like meeting appointments. The system I am using doesn't support these options directly (via API) so I am considering one of two solutions.

1. Create an Outlook account and interface with it using the Outlook Interop available in .NET. Then, create a program that would read the body of an email sent from the system and interpret commands in the body that follow a protocol I develop. Finally, have the system email requests to the email account that the program is checking, have the program interpret the requests, and then send out the appropriate emails. I have this solution nearly built, but I would prefer the second solution.

2. Construct the email with all of the excess data from scratch in the system and then send it out. For this solution I need to know how to construct an email from scratch; this means I need to know the email file format used by Outlook so that Outlook interprets it correctly.

I would appreciate any help suggestions you can give me. Thank you.