[jibi]

Just a word of advice for you BES administrators (Exchange only) who plan on updating your users to Outlook 2003 SP2 (available now) and the Exchange servers to 2003 SP2 (not currently available - should be sometime late 2005/early 2006) - update your BES server to 3.6 SP7 or 4.0 SP3 prior. Both service packs, I would imagine, *should* be available prior to the public release of Exchange 2003 SP2, let's hope.

http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgec...00935&vernum=0

Background
Due to an issue with disappearing meetings when cached mode is enabled in Outlook 2003, Microsoft has developed a new design for handling meetings. The new code will be released in Outlook 2003 Service Pack 2 and in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2.

Currently, Outlook handles meetings in the following way:

1. A meeting invitation is received.
2. Outlook creates a tentative meeting.
3. Invitee accepts the meeting invitation.
4. Outlook updates the meeting with an Accepted status.

The BlackBerry Enterprise Server then updates the meeting status on the handheld.

However, after the invitee accepts the invitation in Microsoft’s new design, the original meeting is deleted and replaced with the meeting acceptance and a new Entry ID. This affects how BlackBerry integrates with Outlook because the BlackBerry Enterprise Server recognizes calendar items with different Entry IDs as separate events, even if the contents are identical. Thus, duplicate meetings will appear on the handheld: a deleted meeting, followed by a new meeting.

This behavior will be addressed in BlackBerry Enterprise Server 3.6 Service Pack 7 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.0 Service Pack 3.

[greywolfe]

should/could/would :(

[jibi]

the motto for a new generation. :-D

[EoRaptor]

If you want to see this in action now, go grab the Entourage Exchange update, available here and install it. Youi'll have weird, cannot be accepted calendar events anytime an Entourage person creates one that involves a blackberry user.

Hopefully, SP3 will fix this up.

[jibi]

hmm, i was under the impression that it would only affect those users who were on Exchange 2003 SP2 -and- Outlook 2003 SP2. i have the latter and have not noticed any issues since upgrading.

[EoRaptor]

The Entourage Exchange update is a patch/update for Exchange SP1 that changes how calendaring is handled. Along with Office Mac 2004 SP2, it allows much, much better exchange intergration of Entourage. Only, it breaks blackberry calendar syncing of events generated by Entourage. I suspect Outlook 2003 SP2 + this patch would have the same problems.

[jibi]

ahh nice. i'm glad we don't have any mac users here.

[PacketRat]

Glad to see this.. I have placed multiple calls to Microsoft about this issue and was told its a blackberry problem. Nice to see that they actually knew about it. TAM is going to get a ear full this time.

[FlemmingRiis]

and exsp2 will be out tomorrow so fun fun

[jnelson2000]

BES 4.0 SP3 will be released within the next 2 weeks. Again, DO NOT apply SP2 to exchange until you apply SP3 to your BES. This will have adverse effects with calendar and appointments.

[jibi]

i just installed BES 4.0 SP3 to our test server. it is backwards compatible, so thats a nice thing that i didn't even think about until after i started the installation. hehe. anyhow, a few things i didn't like (and maybe they will be added for the public release). in the admin.pdf file, it no longer lists the IT Policy as an Appendix - simply refers you to the less than crappy IT Policy manual. I liked being able to see which IT Policy items they added from released to release.

[revision78]

Question, in the original post i see ver 3.6 SP7, how come when i go to blackberry's site i only see a sp3a for 3.6? is this a sp that has still yet to be released?

[jibi]

This is very interesting.

http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgec...44737&vernum=0

Research In Motion® currently does not support Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 when it is applied on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. This applies to all existing versions of BlackBerry Enterprise Server. This Service Pack will be tested in a future release vehicle for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.0 and later.

With respect to applying Service Pack 2 to a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Research In Motion is not aware of any limitations and as such will support this configuration.

I wonder why the mixed KB articles on Exchange 2003 SP2.

revision78, i'm not sure where you're looking, but if you go to blackberry.com then Support then Downloads then Service Packs and select 3.6 for Microsoft Exchange, it has SP6, SP5, SP4, SP3, SP2a and SP1a listed.