[brader]

Forgive me if this has been discussed before but I searched and could not find the information I need.

We are running BES 4.5 with Groupwise. Everything is working fine and the groupwise address book is synching fine but I am not getting any users personal address books that they have in groupwise to synch.

Is this possible?

If so can someone list the steps I need to take?

Thanks so much from a noob!

[jcrawfor]

Have you specified the address book for each user to sync to already?

If not, in Blackberry Manager:
1. Double click on each user to bring up properties
2. In the properties window you should see PIM Synch on the left
3. Click on PIM Synch
4. In the right pane is where you set all of the various PIM Synch functions.
5. Scroll all of the way to the bottom for address book
6. Double click in the field AddressBookSubscribed
7. Choose an address book to synch with

Blackberry handhelds can only synch with one address book (as far as I know). I share an address book with all of my BB users that contains all of the BB and corporate cell phone users. I have found that this is easier than having them weed through our corporate address book. The users simply copy all of the contacts into their personal address book. I send out a message using BB Manager when a contact is added, removed, or changed. I am sure there is an easier way to do this, but this process has been working for our organization for a couple years now. I hope this helps.

Jeff

[brader]

I had tried that once before but this time was the lucky time because it worked.

Thanks!

[jaltig]

Holy cow you guys lost me. Brader are you sure of the version your running because all I can find out there for groupwise is BES 4.1 sp3 hf2 - which btw has serious issues with contacts and updating current ones specifically.

Jeff - I've been researching to death just what your doing and trying to find a good user friendly way to do this. If I understand you right you are putting a shared address book out there and your users are copying the specific contacts to their personal address book. And the personal address book is what they are syncing through the BES?

Is this updating on the handheld for you? Can you tell me what version of BES you are running? Are you syncing bi-directional or one way? are you set to server wins or device wins?

any info is appreciated
thanks
jim

[jcrawfor]

jaltig-

I am using BES version 4.1.3.16 (I believe this is besg413hf2), GroupWise 7.0.2 Hot Patch 1 (backend), and GW 6.5 SP6 (I think) on the BES server.

I believe most of my users are set to the default PIM actions of bi-directional and server wins. I may have changed one or two users to handheld wins to deal with issues they were experiencing.

No, the contacts do not update automatically (I will detail this below).

I won't bore you with the details as to how we got to our current solution. Basically, we have found that the keep it simple stupid approach has worked the best.

Here are the details:
1. Each user syncs to their personal address book. This is required because they add their own contacts that our outside of our business unit (family, friends, other work contacts, etc.).
2. I have a shared address book that I maintain using a generic GW account. This address book contains our 56 cell phone users (31 are Blackberry users). These contacts are added from the GW system address book and then I add PIN and cell phone number.
3. When I set up a new users Blackberry I share the address book with them. I show them how to copy the contacts from their shared address book and how to categorize them if they have a lot of personal contacts.
4. When a user is added, changed, or deleted I use the BES Manager to email all BB users to update their address books. I usually provide the relevant information in the email as well if they prefer to update it by hand or are unable to login to a GW client interface.
-If it is a new contact(s) the end user just drags the new contact(s) into their personal address book.
-If it is a change to an existing contact(s) the end user deletes the existing and drags the updated one from the address book.

In my opinion, they only follow the above procedure for new contacts. Simple changes they usually make by hand.

We have been using BES 4 since it was first released for GroupWise. When we originally rolled out Blackberry handhelds we had users set to sync directly to the shared address book. This was great for me, but not great for the end user (they got the address book that I gave them). We did try having the end user maintain their personal contacts in the SIM address book in addition to the corporate address book I supplied, but they did not like this either. So this is where we landed. To be honest, it is not that bad. I basically do my best to inform them of changes and it is up to them to maintain their own address book. And yes, I do end up fixing their address book at one point or another (that they made a booboo in - never a systemic problem).

I hope this helps,
Jeff

[brader]

Originally Posted by jaltig

Holy cow you guys lost me. Brader are you sure of the version your running because all I can find out there for groupwise is BES 4.1 sp3 hf2 - which btw has serious issues with contacts and updating current ones specifically.

Jeff - I've been researching to death just what your doing and trying to find a good user friendly way to do this. If I understand you right you are putting a shared address book out there and your users are copying the specific contacts to their personal address book. And the personal address book is what they are syncing through the BES?

Is this updating on the handheld for you? Can you tell me what version of BES you are running? Are you syncing bi-directional or one way? are you set to server wins or device wins?

any info is appreciated
thanks
jim

Oops I misspoke on the version.

I am running 4.0.5.10

[jaltig]

Jeff,

It sounds like we are living parallell lives. You have the same situation that we do - i just haven't had any success getting the address book to update and have been waiting on 4.1.4

Thanks for your input - this is pretty much the same situation i'm in and is also the same path that I was headed down. Hopefuly we'll get there soon

Jim

[smoorani]

Originally Posted by jaltig

Jeff,

It sounds like we are living parallell lives. You have the same situation that we do - i just haven't had any success getting the address book to update and have been waiting on 4.1.4

Thanks for your input - this is pretty much the same situation i'm in and is also the same path that I was headed down. Hopefuly we'll get there soon

Jim

Last I heard was Mid February for 4.1 SP4 for GroupWise.

[marduo]

brader, address book syncs can take 4 hours if they are done on the client or from the BES server. User should just leave things alone for the next 4 hours.