Invitation to the October 2008 Open Mic: Using Blackberry Enterprise Server with Domino

IBM is hosting an Open Mic conference call with Lotus Development and Support Engineering to discuss Using Blackberry Enterprise Server with Domino

The Open Mic call will be held on Thu, October 30, 2008. This call will take place in one session at 10:00 AM EDT. The call will last 60 minutes. Please dial into the call 5 minutes before the scheduled start. This conference call is designed to be an open question & answer format, so bring your questions. There will be no formal presentation.

Please post any advanced questions within the ND8 forum by creating a response to this document. This Open Mic call will be recorded for future use, and will be made available via the Flash after the call.

Please refer to the Open Mic Tech Flash for details about the conference call numbers.

We also encourage you to share your experiences and perspectives about using BES with Domino and other Notes/Domino topics in the Notes/Domino Best Practices Wiki.

Subject: When will PAB design include missing important @Trim translation on fields?

As you are probably aware spaces at the ends of names can trigger duplicate contacts to appear during sync with BES or the Desktop Software.

I haven’t been able to think of a good reason for spaces at the ends of names. Isn’t this why we have the @Trim function in Notes?

When will the PAB design be fixed?

When will the Blackberry device software trim these spaces?

At present, a contact with a space on the device will trigger a duplicate contact in Notes at each slow sync.

Subject: Notes 8 or 7

We’re bringing in BES server from scratch. The domino servers are 8.02. Most clients are still 7. Would you suggest / recommend that I upgrade the user’s mail file and client to 8 prior to putting them on the blackberry?

Subject: Yes…

I would definitely recommend that you get your Domino infrastructure in place before setting up BES. That means upgrade the mail files and Notes clients so the users have the new functionality in place.

When you install BES, you can go directly to 4.1.6 Maintenance Release 1.

Subject: Failover between mail server and BES

Hello.

I periodically have users who are ‘failing over’ from ‘mailhost’ (our mail server) to ‘bbserver’ (our blackberry enterprise server). I will this this message:

10/24/2008 07:50:10 AM {User Name/Domain Name} Mail Server CN=mailhost/O=Domain Name failed over to CN=bbserver/O=Domain Name

After a couple of minutes, I will get the reverse - it will fail back to mailhost.

  1. Is this something that I should be worried about?

  2. Is there something I can do to stop this from happening or is this how it was intended to work?

Thank you,

Charles Buege

The Morey Corporation

Subject: Failover Messages

This is an issue with newer version of the BES server. After upgrading to 4.1.6 we started seeing this with a lot of our users so we called BES. This is a known issue with RIM and they said they would be fixing it soon.

Subject: Failover Messages

Hi Charles / Sean,

I did some checking into this. We do have 2 issues that are currently targeted for 4.1.7. The first has to do with the address book being on a different server than the mail file. The second is if there is a difference in case between the mail server name and what is in the person document for the user. Both of those will cause the log line to appear. Other than that, we will log that line during the normal fail over / load balance between Domino servers. If the issue you are experiencing doesn’t seem to be related to these I would suggest opening (or reopening) a case with BlackBerry Support so we can ensure the issue is addressed for you.

Cheers,

Adam Kawecki

Principal Analyst

Research In Motion Limited

Subject: Questions

We are new users to BES on Domino (1 week now). My apologies if some of this is covered in manuals as I am not the person who setup the server originally.

  1. Is it possible to set the default mail reconciliation to delete on both the hand held and mailbox?

  2. Can BES be set to send outgoing messages through our mail server and, consequently, through our email filters? Our filter scans for content as well as malware and then stamps the message stating we cleared it and the info is confidential, blah blah blah.

  3. We have some signatures in Notes that are HTML files. How do we get those to work through BB? Or, at the very least, remove the ‘Sent from Blackberry’ signature without adding one of our own? (A Google search turned up many solutions but all of them refer to older versions and/or devices and did not work for me.)

Subject: Why doesn’t BES create Home 2, Work 2, Picture, Other Phone, Ring Tones fields in Notes like it does for PIN?

And why can’t the Picture PIM Sync field mapping not be set at the global level? At present one can map the device Picture field only on a particular user. The other fields can be mapped using the Global PIM Sync Field Mapping dialog.

This is quite annoying.

However I’d rather have the option for the BES to create these fields (especially Picture) in Notes like it creates the PIN field on the contact document.

Subject: User load per server?

With all services on one BES, and a remote backend SQL configuration, how many users per BES are you seeing before performance begins to degrade?

Any imporvements if the BES is Domino 8?

Subject: users per BES server?

I’ve read on other forums that 1000 is pushing the limits.

Subject: BES Server Fallback Scenario

My Name is Ulrich Greb from Amadeus ADP in Germany. I have the following question in regards to BES Server Fallback Scenario:

Environment: 2 BES 4.1.5 with Domino 8 and the BESMgmt on an special SQL Server. Both Servers with approx. 600 User each.

If 1 Server crashes, we need to move all Users to the other Server. As the State DBs are only kept on the Users BES, how can we find a solution for that.

If the solution is, to replicate the DBs between both BES Servers, how can we manage Users that get removed from the BES? As the State DBs get replicated, the DB will be readded from the 2nd Server.

Thanks

Subject: Logging

I can’t seem to find where logs are or even how to configure what to log. Is there a good book for BES?

Subject: Logging

Hi Luanne,

The DebugLogLevel defines the logging level. In the registry under HKLM\Software\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Logging Info there is a key for each component. Under that there is a DebugLogLevel dword. Most of the logging defaults to either level 3 or 4. Lower log levels typically mean smaller logs and less information. Generally when troubleshooting having the log level for each component at 4 provides the information needed.

I would suggest checking the following.

Search for “DebugLogLevel” on www.blackberry.com/btsc.

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/search.do?languages=&rwTarget=%2Fbtsc%2FrfPlayerWidget.do&searchMode=GuidedSearch&searchString=debugloglevel&cmd=search&productFamily=&contextType=gs

BlackBerry Certification:

BlackBerry Training:

Cheers,

Adam Kawecki

Principal Analyst

Research In Motion Limited

Subject: Invitation to the October 2008 Open Mic: Using Blackberry Enterprise Server with Domino

I have tried using BES with very little support from Blackberry. We use Remote Desktop for administering our servers. When trying to install BES, we ran into problems because it will not install on a server that uses Remote Desktop, it insists that the server is in application mode. It detected it incorrectly. Even after many attempts of switching modes on the server end, we never were able to get it installed. Has this problem been addressed?

Many companies support both Windows Mobile devices and Blackbery devices. I like to keep my sync’ing applications seperate from one another and definately not on the same server as the Domino server. Will you make BES so that nothing needs to be installed in the Domino server?

Subject: What is the best way to deal with removal of Calendar notifications?

Removal of calendar notifications (like acceptance) from the Notes Inbox doesn’t seem to trigger removal from the device.

The device doesn’t have a remove vs delete option.

What is the best way to deal with these discrepancies? And the answer is not don’t use the reconciliation option to delete on mailbox & handheld.

Subject: response re. read mark synchronization

A response to a participants question. The replication of unread marks is only relevant if there are multiple replicas of the mail file (ie. the notebook case).

Opening a message in Notes changes the read status in Notes. This doesn’t propogate rapidly to the handheld (it does eventually), unlike deletions or addition which propogate in seconds. On the device choosing message list menu option Reconcile Now will make BES notice the change on the mail database.

I suspect read status is propogated by polling not through a notification from the mail server to BES. Perhaps the polling rate can be changed via registry setting.

Subject: Polling Changes

Oliver,

I am hoping you can clarify your comment:

I suspect read status is propogated by polling not through a notification from the mail server to BES. Perhaps the polling rate can be changed via registry setting.

My handheld will ONLY reconcile when I force it to. Otherwise - unread marks are not updated

If the polling is done from the handheld - where would the registry setting be located / how might it update the handheld about the new setting?

Any further information is appreciated. I talked with tech support today ( PMR 71620 - 082).

Subject: IBM Sametime Client for BBs

My Name is Ulrich Greb from Amadeus ADP in Germany. I have a second question about the IBM ST Client V8.

Some very basic BB typing functions are missing in the IBM ST Clients (all Versions). For example, pressing character a little longer it appears as a capital letter.

Or secondly, pressing twice the space bar give a dot and space.

These are functions that can be used in every BB Application and is really missing in the IBM ST Client.

Thanks

Subject: How do I make t my trash folder sync?

Or at minimum how do I undelete messages deleted at the handheld using the handheld?