Blackberry Admins - a question?

[paddyhasneeds]

Got the bloody "Send As when in a protected group" stuff working.

I am struggling to get my head around exactly how the sync works.

Say I'm in the office and the BB is on my desk. I have 20 emails arrive into Outlook throughout the day, and I deal with 15 of them. When I look on the BB I still appear to have 20 messages unread, not the 5 I'd expect.

Equally if I mark a message as read on the BB it seems to mark as read in Outlook, but if I delete a message on the BB and then log in via OWA it's still in my Inbox on the Exchange server, but not on the BB.

Impressed but slightly confused and I can't find a single RTFM to cover it.

[Ordinary_Chap]

paddyhasneeds said:

Got the bloody "Send As when in a protected group" stuff working.

I am struggling to get my head around exactly how the sync works.

Say I'm in the office and the BB is on my desk. I have 20 emails arrive into Outlook throughout the day, and I deal with 15 of them. When I look on the BB I still appear to have 20 messages unread, not the 5 I'd expect.

Equally if I mark a message as read on the BB it seems to mark as read in Outlook, but if I delete a message on the BB and then log in via OWA it's still in my Inbox on the Exchange server, but not on the BB.

Impressed but slightly confused and I can't find a single RTFM to cover it.

Here goes, the sync is one way so from the blackberry only to the mailbox.

As for deleting email off the BB, you need to go into the email client, select options and there should be an option called email reconiliation or something similar and in there, there is an option called delete on - select mailbox and handheld then it will delete from your inbox too.

If you get stuck either post it on here or feel free to PM me.

Lee.

Edited by Ordinary_Chap on Tuesday 23 November 22:01

[Bikerjon]

yes look at the reconcile options. The sync isn't purely one way, you can certainly delete on both the mailbox and handheld. Also when you read your 15 emails in outlook the blackberry wont reflect that change instantly but should do eventually - I think they can remain unread for up to 20mins or so. They set it like that for performance reasons and i'm not sure if it can be changed (i haven't used the latest BES so not fully familiar with it)

[Ordinary_Chap]

Bikerjon said:

yes look at the reconcile options. The sync isn't purely one way, you can certainly delete on both the mailbox and handheld. Also when you read your 15 emails in outlook the blackberry wont reflect that change instantly but should do eventually - I think they can remain unread for up to 20mins or so. They set it like that for performance reasons and i'm not sure if it can be changed (i haven't used the latest BES so not fully familiar with it)

Sorry but I think you're wrong.

I have never seen a sync that happens reading/deleting emails get sent back to the device.

You can sync other stuff back to the device like calender, contacts etc but not email.

I'm happy to be wrong, I just don't think I am.

[Bikerjon]

Ordinary_Chap said:

I have never seen a sync that happens reading/deleting emails get sent back to the device.

Should work. That's the point of wireless reconcile isn't it? otherwise the BB would always be showing new messages and you would have to constantly manage your new emails in two places - outlook and the device.

I know there are issues if you use Outlook with delivery set to a .PST or you if you "hard delete" messages using shift-delete. I also dont think the BIS service supports this either but using your own BES and Exchange should work fine.

I suspect wireless reconcile is turned off on the device but there's an article here that gives some other reasons too.

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/viewContent.do?exte...

Edited by Bikerjon on Wednesday 24th November 11:35

[paddyhasneeds]

Finger crossed things are behaving now.

I decided to do a "mark all prior" to start from a clean slate, and just carried on using Outlook for a bit and when I looked on the BB I noticed some new mail was showing as read, some as unread, depending what I'd dealt with in Outlook.

I marked it all as read in Outlook and the BB didn't update within a few seconds (entirely normal I'm sure), so I did a reconcile now and it marked them as read, so fingers crossed..

Next task, Apps...

[Ordinary_Chap]

Bikerjon said:

Ordinary_Chap said:

I have never seen a sync that happens reading/deleting emails get sent back to the device.

Should work. That's the point of wireless reconcile isn't it? otherwise the BB would always be showing new messages and you would have to constantly manage your new emails in two places - outlook and the device.

I know there are issues if you use Outlook with delivery set to a .PST or you if you "hard delete" messages using shift-delete. I also dont think the BIS service supports this either but using your own BES and Exchange should work fine.

I suspect wireless reconcile is turned off on the device but there's an article here that gives some other reasons too.

http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/viewContent.do?exte...

Edited by Bikerjon on Wednesday 24th November 11:35

Yes my mistake it's BIS that doesn't do that not BES.

[davethebunny]

the one thing that i don't like is that flags are synced.

I have to sit there in front of outlook with the bb and copy the flags over

[paddyhasneeds]

Silly question but what dictates whether the red "new mail" led flashes?

I've had the thing on the desk most of the day and have noticed how it'll blink when new mail arrives and if I read it in Outlook a short while later it stops blinking, but sometimes I'll unlock it and find I have a bunch of unread mail showing though the red led isn't flashing.

This is a 93xx if that matters.

[Bikerjon]

paddyhasneeds said:

Silly question but what dictates whether the red "new mail" led flashes?

Switched to iphone a while back so I'm not that familiar with the current blackberry devices (they seem to change their product range every few weeks!) I don't know if the behaviour of the red led is consistent accross all devices but it usually means new email, calender reminder, voicemail, text message etc. Basically something "new". I think it only blinks for 15 mins or so.

paddyhasneeds said:

but sometimes I'll unlock it and find I have a bunch of unread mail showing though the red led isn't flashing.

This could be the 20 minute/100 changes rule where wireless reconciliation only happens if one of those conditions is met. Theres a lag between what you see in outlook and what you see on the device. However it should get there eventually and instantly if you do a reconcile now. There's a whole bunch of articles/tests if you google "blackberry reconcile 20 minutes".

1 other thing. When it's on your desk do you have it docked in a cradle? Do they even come with cradles thesedays?! I only ask as the Blackberry desktop software and the "cradle status" can interfere with the way you expect some features to work. I found it easier to abandon using the cradles and desktop software. Pretty much everything can be done wirelessly including deployment.

[paddyhasneeds]

Bikerjon said:

paddyhasneeds said:

Silly question but what dictates whether the red "new mail" led flashes?

Switched to iphone a while back so I'm not that familiar with the current blackberry devices (they seem to change their product range every few weeks!) I don't know if the behaviour of the red led is consistent accross all devices but it usually means new email, calender reminder, voicemail, text message etc. Basically something "new". I think it only blinks for 15 mins or so.

Ah that could make sense as it explains the pseudo-randomness of when it seems to stop flashing.

I'm hoping to have a play with BES Express this weekend, sad I know but it's just been a mad week and it's actually helped that this thing has pretty much just worked out the box.

I have found some oddities with reconciliation, in that odd messages seem to stay marked as unread on the BB. I think, can't be positive, that this is down to the fact that if I'm at my desk I sometimes mark/read/delete new mail before Outlook seems to finish registering that it's arrived.

I find myself genuinely liking this thing. I was a little concerned that I was being blinkered by management facilities and I'd find it a crock of st but convince myself it was good, but I'd actually have one if the company offered me one, whereas I wouldn't have a Nokia if you paid me, because in my situation I want the email/outlook functionality more than I do the phone.

[dave328]

paddyhasneeds said:

Bikerjon said:

paddyhasneeds said:

Silly question but what dictates whether the red "new mail" led flashes?

Switched to iphone a while back so I'm not that familiar with the current blackberry devices (they seem to change their product range every few weeks!) I don't know if the behaviour of the red led is consistent accross all devices but it usually means new email, calender reminder, voicemail, text message etc. Basically something "new". I think it only blinks for 15 mins or so.

Ah that could make sense as it explains the pseudo-randomness of when it seems to stop flashing.

I'm hoping to have a play with BES Express this weekend, sad I know but it's just been a mad week and it's actually helped that this thing has pretty much just worked out the box.

I have found some oddities with reconciliation, in that odd messages seem to stay marked as unread on the BB. I think, can't be positive, that this is down to the fact that if I'm at my desk I sometimes mark/read/delete new mail before Outlook seems to finish registering that it's arrived.

I find myself genuinely liking this thing. I was a little concerned that I was being blinkered by management facilities and I'd find it a crock of st but convince myself it was good, but I'd actually have one if the company offered me one, whereas I wouldn't have a Nokia if you paid me, because in my situation I want the email/outlook functionality more than I do the phone.

Are you hard deleting items - i.e. shift+delete in Outlook? BES v4.0 and before couldn't cope with that - it was fixed in BES v5 which I take it you are using. Perhaps BES Express doesn't support it either.

There is also a setting which monitors the amount of items that are hard deleted and reconciles them properly - the default is quite low but can be set up to 1000. We have it cranked up because our users file e-mails into a document management system and as far as BES is concerned, they are hard deleted. The downside to increasing the figure is that the higher the setting the more load it puts on the Exchange server IIRC.

[paddyhasneeds]

No, these are mainly items I'm reading and keeping in Outlook. I do have an Outlook client rule that moves them to a folder and displays a desktop alert (rather than a rule that runs on Exchange, as you can't do a desktop alert with those).

There was also a few messages that I know I deleted and then emptied the Deleted Items folder on Outlook, that still showed as unread on the Blackberry.

I did change the setting you speak of, I forget the exact name, but by default it's 100 so I upped it to 1000.

Oh, also interested if any of you have played with encryption as that's something we're interested in, but I've read stories about battery life. I guess what I'm interested in is whether you've all gone with encryption or a password policy of X tries then wipe?

[dave328]

It will handle deletions via the Deleted items folder so must be something else. I do have some reconcilliation issues with our environment which we've had since moving to BES 5 - but I think it's more to do with the horsepower of the servers than anything else. It does get there but much slower than BES 4.

Our password policy is 10 incorrect entries and then wipe. Timeout is 2 minutes then lock, password must be at least 4 characters with at least one alpha and one numeric character.

I've not looked at encryption - I don't think it's necessary unless you're name's Obama, but I'd be interested to hear what other people do. We do encrypt the memory card though.

edit - being dim here. Encryption of the transport stream is enabled by default. Data on the device also encrypted optionally. I thought you mean encryption of the TS on top of that, i.e with your own VPN. As said, I don't think this is necessary unless you are really paranoid..

Edited by dave328 on Friday 26th November 22:52

[Ordinary_Chap]

paddyhasneeds said:

No, these are mainly items I'm reading and keeping in Outlook. I do have an Outlook client rule that moves them to a folder and displays a desktop alert (rather than a rule that runs on Exchange, as you can't do a desktop alert with those).

There was also a few messages that I know I deleted and then emptied the Deleted Items folder on Outlook, that still showed as unread on the Blackberry.

I did change the setting you speak of, I forget the exact name, but by default it's 100 so I upped it to 1000.

Oh, also interested if any of you have played with encryption as that's something we're interested in, but I've read stories about battery life. I guess what I'm interested in is whether you've all gone with encryption or a password policy of X tries then wipe?

I'm still not convinced the sync works from outlook as the chap suggests. I've never seen it.

As for encryption use it and passwords. It doesn't really affect battery life, afterall the devices were designed to run it so why wouldn't you?

I've never been to a BES site and not seen encryption running. Just remember to encrypt the memory card too in the security policy since a lot of apps and personal data can get stored there.

[bga]

Ordinary_Chap said:

I'm still not convinced the sync works from outlook as the chap suggests. I've never seen it.

I'm a user, not an admin but the 2 client blackberries (different clients) I have sync from Outlook. If a message has been read in Outlook, it will appear read on the BB's after 10 mins or so.

[paddyhasneeds]

Ordinary_Chap said:

I've never been to a BES site and not seen encryption running. Just remember to encrypt the memory card too in the security policy since a lot of apps and personal data can get stored there.

From reading though, if we do that, it appears it doesn't encrypt files copied to the memory card from a PC.

So, say you take the card out and put it in a card reader, or connect the BB to a PC via USB and copy a bunch of files across, they aren't encrypted, which seems poor if it's correct.

[davethebunny]

paddyhasneeds said:

Ordinary_Chap said:

I've never been to a BES site and not seen encryption running. Just remember to encrypt the memory card too in the security policy since a lot of apps and personal data can get stored there.

From reading though, if we do that, it appears it doesn't encrypt files copied to the memory card from a PC.

So, say you take the card out and put it in a card reader, or connect the BB to a PC via USB and copy a bunch of files across, they aren't encrypted, which seems poor if it's correct.

That's correct. The BB will only encrpt things it puts on the card itself iyswim.

If you put a card in a card reader and copy over those files are not encrypted.

That's why our org run sanctuary as well which stops you writing to an unencrypted device.

TBH i wish some BES admins would have more sense.

Our lot are paranoid about all this stuff. So i have a bb that i can't connect to the desktop and write to, and a card in the bb i can't take out and read from.

Makes using the camera a complete PITA. You have to email yourself all the photos in order to get them onto your desktop.

[paddyhasneeds]

The issue I have isn't that I especially want to lock them down to the point of not being able to do anything, that's just plain silly, but the 9300's I'm testing come with a 2gb micro-SD card. 2gb still holds one hell of a lot of data should you lose the phone.

We mandate encrypted USB sticks and hard drives in our laptops, phones have always been a huge gray are which we're now looking at.

I actually take the point about transferring things like photo's, but as I said, you lose it, someone finds it an plugs the thing in...

[davethebunny]

paddyhasneeds said:

The issue I have isn't that I especially want to lock them down to the point of not being able to do anything, that's just plain silly, but the 9300's I'm testing come with a 2gb micro-SD card. 2gb still holds one hell of a lot of data should you lose the phone.

We mandate encrypted USB sticks and hard drives in our laptops, phones have always been a huge gray are which we're now looking at.

I actually take the point about transferring things like photo's, but as I said, you lose it, someone finds it an plugs the thing in...

But if you receive the data on the BB and store it on the card (docs etc) it will be encrypted.

It's just if you take the card out and write to it that the problem will occur.

(Unless you use media manager)

You can disable the sd slot through the IT policy though.

How do you enforce encrpyted sticks/cds?