Our company does consulting work, we often are asked to have email accounts on each of our clients internal email systems. Right now use our internal BES to get our company email/sync calendar/etc, and then we install the redirector at each client location to receive their emails/etc. However, the issue is when they schedule appointments with us, we aren't able to accept/decline meeting invitations (since only using the redirector at client sites). So, this means that we have to find a pc, vpn to their network, crank up outlook, accept/decline and move on.

In many cases our clients already have BES servers, my question is whether or not it would be possible to use our BB devices to connect with our internal BES and their BES allowing us to do meeting invites, sync contacts, etc on both systems.

My intial thought is that it can't be done simply because when i tried to enterprise activate my device on a clients BES it said that i would no longer be tied to our internal BES.

But, I have high hopes that maybe someone out there has figured a way to handle this.

Thanks for any input you have.

Your device cannot be active on two different BES servers at one time...

Why not have your clients set up custom recipients to forward the emails destined for your address on their system to your local mail account where your BES server is located?

The reason we don't have them forward to us is simply because their clients (i.e. we are subcontracted to their customers) need to have the mail come from our clients email addresses.

i.e.
my address = @abc.com
my clients email address = @myclient.com
their clients expect to get mail from @myclient.com

if they forward all to me, then when i reply it will come from @abc.com and therefore violating their request to use their email address for replies.

Are there any 3rd party softwares that i could install on my clients computer that would push the calendar/contacts to my BB w/o using BES and w/o ever having a local USB connection to that machine?

Am I alone in this scenario?

Wondering if anyone has come up with a creative way to get your calendar from work and calendar from home to synch up wirelessly? I have a personal bes server and my pearl is tied to it, i have bes at work too but as stated earlier, i can't tie the device to more than one bes. However, i woud love to be able to have my personal and work calendar both available on the device. Right now i just use the tmo BIS to check my work email via OWA and pass it onto the device, which is great for email - except when someone sends me a calendar appt request and I cant accept/decline from the phone. Right now i go logon to OMA from the phone, accept the appt, find the appt in the OMA calendar, forward to my personal acct, accept from device and that places it on the device.

i tried the google calendar option, sync the work calendar to google, then google to personal calendar, which in turn pushes new appts to the device - however, i ran into duplicates and still don't have the ability to accept meeting requests....

maybe i'm just being lazy....

You could have the the devices hooked up to one BES plus the Desktop Redirector (Make sure they have different names).

This way you could get emails from both environments but obviously for the Desktop Redirector to work it needs to be running on a PC for each user.

right, i already have email coming from both, the issue is the calendar/contacts from both. redirector doesn't do anything but mail. i currently use the BIS for one account and BES for the other. the BIS works great for getting the email from the second account and even marks messages as read, keeps sent items up to date, deletes/etc. but no calendar, which is what i really want from both accounts.

I am doing consulting work for 3 companies and they would like me to be on their BES. Carrying 3 devices is not ideal as you can imagine!

Have you found a solution yet? Thanks!

If your company, or your client, or one of your customers has a valid TSupport contract (or any other paid support agreement with RIM) I suggest you contact RIM and ask them. The short answer is one BES per device is all you can do.

Barring something RIM can do for you, you'll either need to source one handheld, per user, per BES (which depending on how often this level of integration needs to be used) can either be jsutified or not. I guessing you won't be able to justify the cost and complexity of that many devices. But perhaps since you client or customers are making this requirement, I suggest you float the idea of billing them for the additional devices and airtime and see if they bite. The other option is to source an ultralight notebook (3lbs or less) with some sort of HSDPA/UMTS or EV-DO access (suggest a data card or a notebook with an internal express card for WWAN) and use the full blown Outlook client.

I don't recall having read anyone finding a "workaround" like the one you are asking for. It appears that it still may not be possible at this time. It's actually a much requested feature (I know I'd like to be able to do that). But it doesn't hurt to ask.

i have had 1 device connected to 3 different BES servers (each in a different company). unfortunately i never really looked at what happened with the Calendar, so if anyone feels like having ago at it let me know the result. I will post the instructions on how i did that tomorrow as i dont have the process to hand at the moment.

an employee of my company moved to another job. they activated his blackberry on their enterprise server, but it stayed connected to ours. i was able to send apps, as well as patches (the DST patch) and he was getting email from both servers. maybe a glitch or something but it does happen

If you try and add one handheld to two BES servers I'd expect that you'd regularly get the error "Decryption failure. Please regenerate key" on the handheld as the "other" BES (the one that hasn't most recently communicated successfully) tries to talk to it.

I found this out the hard way when someone sent me a Blackberry to use that was still on another BES...