Dear Nicole,
I think your best bet will be to look at the entire range of WordPress filters available for Views: http://wp-types.com/documentation/user-guides/views-filters/ and also at http://wp-types.com/documentation/user-guides/passing-arguments-to-views/
If you need more insight into how to apply filters, here is a page explaining them in detail: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_filter
Those are the two supported ways for passing arguments and they will allow to connect the options panel. I do not use this panel though, so I can not tell you how it stores it's data and how to access it. But you will certainly find this in it's own documentation.
Please let me know if you are satisfied with my answer and if I can help you with any other questions you might have.
Regards,
Paweł