Quick Lookup from Windows 10 Taskbar

[Dick Montage]

I have an idea but I don't know where to start.  Back in the 9x days, I'd have built a toolbar for the Windows Taskbar but things have moved on a lot since then.  Maybe some sort of Cortana integration is what I'm after, I don't know...

 

Let's say I have a few data sources, one of them being our AD, another being a database of clients, etc.  I'm picturing some sort of textbox in the taskbar that a user can start typing into and it react to the input by searching.

 

The back-end side of "take some text based input and search all these collated sources and then return some matches" is easy.  What I'm totally unaware of in modern UI development is what that front-end is.

 

I'm coming at this from a place of: Our current Intranet is a mess.  I have established that people are using it for one primary purpose - to look stuff up.  Hence, I argue that an Intranet is "access to information" not (necessarily) "a website".

 

So, any ideas on the UI side?  I am adept with C# and happy to learn anything else.  And before anyone asks, yes, I have company clearance to do this.

 

Thanks

[Dick Montage]

The more I think about it, I feel that some new search provider for Cortana is the way to go?

 

No idea how to accomplish this but willing to learn, but before I do - does that sound valid?  For only internal use?  Is that a thing that can be done?

[Dick Montage]

Nothing? Do we not have developers on here any more?

[+virtorio MVC]

You can still add custom toolbars to the task bar (called "DeskBand") and you can extend the Windows Search index with a custom filter. 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/desktop/legacy/cc144099(v%3Dvs.85)
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/search/-search-3x-wds-extidx-overview