multiple global address lists

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

How to enable address lookups for individual companies in Hosted BES environments

Sometimes when you are hosting a BES server in an environment where you are hosting multiple domain names on a single BES server you need the ability to separate global address list lookups. You wouldn’t want people in one organization looking up contacts from another organization.

There is a way to do this but it involves some registry hacking:

Check to see that the users are members of the same company in Active Directory. Then in the registry go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Agents registry key. Create a new DWORD value called “Hosted Server”. Then in the value type in a “0″ and click ok. Then set the DWORD value for AllowAddressLookup to “0″ as well. That’s it!

-RP