I have a question regarding the Domino's Directory Assistance and external address books. Our company would like the BlackBerry users to perform name lookups on their handheld for people who aren't listed in the primary directory. Users on the Notes client can obviously do this, but can can BlackBerry users do this too?

The directions I received for enabling this on the BES are as follows:

1. Create a replica of the External Address Book (extnames.nsf) on the BES

2. Create a replica of the Directory Assistance database (faada.nsf) on the BES

3. Modify the server document on the BES and list the directory assistance database as shown below. (screenshot not shown, but the change was under the "Basics" tab of the server properties, and under the "Directory Information" heading. Change the "Directory Assistance databse name:" to faada.nsf.

4. Restart Domino on the BES.

I've searched and read posts from other people here stating that this is working fine in their environment. However, one of our tech guys contacted BlackBerry Technical Support to ask a question and this was the reply he received:

"Thank you for contacting BlackBerry Technical Support.

You asked a question about Directory Assistance (i.e. performing lookup in an external address book). Please note that currently, this feature is not supported in BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

If you require further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us. Thank you again for contacting us.

Sincerely,

Rajan
BlackBerry Technical Support
Research In Motion Limited
Tel: 1-877-255-2377
Email:
Web: www.blackberry.com"


Can anyone shed any light on this? Obviously Tech Support will be contacted again, but I wanted to see if someone could shed real world experience. I came from an Exchange background, so I'm not very familiar with Domino and would appreciate any information.

Thanks.

DA - works fine.
Do not replicate the the DA database(step 2). Instead make a notes copy of the DA database and point the location of the external address book to your blackberry server. all other steps are good.