Blackberry Enterprise Server

Google Apps for BES

Hi folks, some more news from the BlackBerry front. So the latest salvo fired in the mobility wars comes from Google and BlackBerry.

You’ve all heard of Google Apps, and you’ve all heard of GMail. Currently you can receive your GMail on your BlackBerry by installing the GMail app. Unfortunately if you have used it, it’s not the greatest app and could stand for some improvement.

Well Google has decided to fix that with the Google Apps Connector for BES(BlackBerry Enterprise Server). This connector will allow all sorts of cool features such as the following as listed on Google’s web site:

• Messages sent to your Gmail inbox are pushed to your BlackBerry within 60 seconds.
• Emails read/deleted on your BlackBerry are marked as read/deleted in Gmail, and vice-versa.
• Synchronize BlackBerry folders with labels in Gmail.
• Search for email addresses and phone numbers of other users on your company domain.
• View your Google Calendar schedule on your native BlackBerry application, with one-way synchronization from Google Calendar to your BlackBerry device.
• Contacts in Gmail are automatically synchronized with your BlackBerry address book.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/mobile.html

This is supposed to be available come August 2009.

-RP

Using BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) with Exchange and Multiple GALs (Global Address Lists)

Hi folks, here’s an issue you might run into and tear your hair out over. If you have a BES server working with Exchange and are using multiple GALs (Global Address Lists) in your environment, how do you setup the BES service account to access all the users in the different GALs?

Well the first thing that usually goes wrong is that you can activate everyone but you can’t get certain things such as appointments to sync correctly from the BlackBerry device to Outlook. This is because BES can only look at one GAL. That’s right, you heard me correct, only one GAL. Don’t fret, there is a way around this.

Create a third GAL that incorporates a filter that lists all the users of the other multiple GALs. This way you have one GAL that covers everything. Then give the BES service account permissions to access that GAL. Also make sure you add the Exchange Domain Servers Group full access to the GAL as well. Then in offline address lists you can add that GAL to the offline address list as well. Then don’t give access to the BES service account to the other GALs. This forces the BES service account to only use that one all encompassing GAL you just created.

Then go into your BlackBerry server and when you go to add a user to the BES server you will notice it is seeing all the users from your multiple GALs. That’s it, hope that helps!

-Cheers, RP

Assigning the proper permissions for besadmin on BlackBerry Enterprise Server

Sometimes the problems administrators run into with BES are simply due to improper permissions. The besadmin account (the BlackBerry administrator account) requires certain permissions to do it’s job correctly.

More often than not we find out that someone has been mucking around with the permissions or they just weren’t set correctly in the first place and this causes an issue with BlackBerry devices sending and receiving e-mail.

BlackBerry has some nice directions on their web site on how to setup the appropriate permissions. You can find them here.

 -RP

How to configure your BlackBerry to delete messages on the BlackBerry device and in your Outlook Inbox in a BES environment

One of the simplest configuration checks you should do when having BlackBerry synchronization issues with deletions in a BES environment is to check your reconciliation settings.

First go into the Messages section of your BlackBerry. Then click on the BlackBerry button to access the menu for Messages. Then click on options and select Email Reconciliation which will take you to the appropriate settings. Ensure that the settings look as follows:

Delete On: Mailbox & Handheld

Wireless Reconcile: On

On Conflicts: Mailbox Wins

 If these settings aren’t set, then go to each field and change them to match my settings. That should do the trick!

-RP

Deleted messages on BlackBerry are not showing up as deleted in Outlook Inbox and read messages are not showing up as read.

Another common BlackBerry synchronization issue is also when you delete messages on the BlackBerry and the message does not get deleted from your Outlook inbox even if you click on “Reconcile Now” from the BlackBerry menu. Also another common effect is that when you read a message it doesn’t show up as read on the other side and still shows up as a ‘NEW’ message.

This problem usually stems from a DLL mismatch. There are two very important DLL files that are integral to the proper running of your BES server and those are cdo.dll and mapi32.dll. The versions of these DLL files need to be the same on your BES server and your Exchange server. The easiest way to do this is when you are patching your Exchange server you ensure that you patch your BES server with the exact same patches. This will ensure that things are always in ’sync.’ You can check the version of a file by right clicking on it and going to it’s properties and then checking the ‘Version’ tab.

Now if you think you have patched everything and the DLL files are still mismatched, then you can just copy the DLL file from the Exchange server to your BES server and then register the DLL file using the regsvr32 command and then the path to the DLL. For example, to register cdo.dll you would type: regsvr32 cdo.dll ‘C:\program files\exchsrvr\bin\cdo.dll’.

I of course would like to remind you that before doing any of this to ensure that you always have a full backup of the server you are working on in case you blow something up. Also I would not copy DLL’s from the BES server to the Exchange server, that can cause some interesting results and it is probably a path you do not want to go down. Instead make sure you are copying from the Exchange server to the BES server as I had mentioned above.

After the DLL files that have the version mismatch have been copied and registered, then reboot the BES server and test out deletions and read messages again. You should see that things work as intended now.

-RP

Shift deleting of message in your inbox not deleting on your BlackBerry?

Another common BlackBerry question I get is regarding deletion of messages. I could probably write a whole novel about all the different issues you can run into with BlackBerry synchronization but I’ll spare you the pain and just mention a few things.

When people hold the shift key down and hit delete to permanently delete items in their Outlook it doesn’t give the BES server (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) time to process the deletion so the deletion doesn’t synchronize and in turn your BlackBerry still shows the message as available. How do you fix this? You need to turn on “Hard Deletions” in your BES server. What this does is it allows the BES server to process the shift-deletion of emails so they synchronize properly.

You can do this by following the instructions at this Blackberry Knowledgebase Article Doc ID KB14142.

-RP

Installing BES in a Virtual Environment

Hi folks, today I’d like to talk about BES installations. I find that BES is one of those server installations that lends itself well to virtualization. You see I like to run BES on it’s own server so if you need to reboot it or perform any maintenance, it won’t affect other services.

Of course buying a brand new server just for BES isn’t exactly cost effective. This is where virtualization comes in. Using VMWare you can easily setup a tiny VM with minimal resources just for BES. The downside to this however is that how are you going to plug in a BlackBerry directly to the BES server via USB cable if you need to troubleshoot a BlackBerry device that isn’t synchronizing properly wirelessly?

Well the solution to this is actually pretty straightforward. In most virtualized environments you will usually have one server that is not virtual (a management server as I like to call them), that allows you to manage the virtualized environment with all the administration tools installed on it and perhaps even backup software to backup or replicate the virtual machines to another location. On this same server you can just install the Blackberry Management console and point it at the BES server. This way you can plug in USB devices to the physical management server and the devices will communicate with your virtual BES server.

-RP