My network has monitoring software (Whats Up Gold) that sends out alphanumeric alerts to Skytel pagers via TAP ("telelocator alphanumeric paging"). whenever something critical throws an alert. We've been doing it this way for years - circumventing traditional email - just in case email ever went down, those pages would never make it out.

Now we're looking into BES and Blackberry in general, and I was wondering if anyone had any experience or any pointers in using TAP to send messages to a Blackberry device. I found a document on Blackberry.com called the Paging User Guide (located here: http://tinyurl.com/4g3mq) that speaks of using TAP on the second page, but I've been unable to get it to work.

If anyone has any experience with this, I'd be welcome to hear it.

Thanks.

While we don't use TAP, we use WUG with our devices as well. Since our service with BES is pretty reliable, we use it to page out users, in the event the email fails, we have a backup GSM modem in our datacenter that can send out SMS pages to devices as well.

I've also designed a BB-capable WUG web page that you can view if you have MDS enabled on your BES.

2 questions:

1. What's a GSM modem?

2. Any chance I could get a copy of the BB-enabled WUG page? If you mean you're able to manage your WUG maps on your BB I'd be very interested in that.

1. In essense, a GSM or GPRS modem is basically a cell phone connected to one of your serial/usb ports that allows you to send SMS messages over it. There's even an SMS plugin with WUG that describes this in detail if you want to look it up.

2. You can't manage at the moment, only view. And it's a very basic rough draft, but is easy to navigate and see at a glance from your blackberry. PM me an email addy and I will send it to you.

Ok. I've already got a modem hooked up to a POTS line to dial out, so I guess what I'm really looking for is the best way to use that equipment to send messages to Blackberries. I'm not very familiar with SMS, but looking at the WUG user manual for the SMS plugin, it looks like I can set it to dialup (as opposed to email, which I don't want to use here), but what if my Blackberry is on a data-only plan (no phone)? Does the device still have a phone number? Is this workable?

Also, thanks in advance for the WUG page, I've PM'ed you my email.