BES and Apps (including Maps)
 

[warning - I am not an administrator - just a loyal BB user]

I have a new 9700 on T-Mobile (OS 5.0.0.330), and I operate it through a BES at my small company. (I believe the server version is 4.1).

My problem is that I cannot connect to App World, I cannot successfully install any downloads (like Trimble Outdoors or Google Maps), and BB Maps does not display maps imagery.

My GPS works fine, albeit in a mapless state.

For example, when I try to connect to AppWord, it indicates "loading" for about 30 seconds before I get the message that "BB App World is having trouble connecting to the B App World Server. Verify your network connections and try again."

Our IT consultant told me he thought that the BES was not blocking downloads, and he tried to install Google Maps as a workaround to BB Maps. However, I cannot run Google Maps either - the message is "Network Error. Your enterprise Blackberry server does not allow connections to the Google Maps service." :cry:

Google Mobile has a solution for BB enterprise users. However, even if that were to work, that wouldn't solve my problem, since I don't really want Google Maps. I want to be able to access BB App World and use such apps as Trimble Outdoors.

Note that my internet connections, work perfectly fine, through the T-Mobile web2Go interface. As do the mobile interfaces (if you call them that) for ESPN, Facebook, etc.

Our IT consultant couldn't solve the problem - he thought I had some corrupted software. He first uninstalled and reinstalled Maps, that didn't work so he wiped my device clean and started over. That didn't work either so he installed Google Maps as an alternative to BB Maps. And that didn't work. He didn't think that the server was blocking software. Could that be right?

Does anyone have any suggestions for a fix to either my BB or our BES - if the latter I'll pass on the responses to him.

Thanks, and I appreciate the help!

I beleive you have some BES IT policies in place on your BES server that disallows you to do what you want to do. But would need more details to say what the problem is.

Fadmin, what kinds of details do you need? He's back in the office tomorrow, I'd like to provide as much guidance to him as possible.

My bet is that the BES server is getting blocked by the company's firewall - if the BES box can't access it, neither can the BBs.

If it helps, the relevant bit of the 4.1 documentation is page 24 of the admin guide (Microsoft Exchange 4.1.6 version). It sounds like your BES is either deliberately configured to not allow access from handhelds to external web sites, or has just never been set up.

Assuming that it's just never been configured, your BES admin might need search for information on BES + your particular poxy server (or ask back here). There are lots of different proxy / firewalls in use, and configuring BES to work with some of them isn't straightforward.