Sunday, May 16, 2010

Multiple Notes/Domino address books on your BlackBerry

Long has been the problem of having multiple address books sync to a BlackBerry hand held device.  In the past when we used Palm Pilots and Palm based solutions, we were able to have the users personal address book as well as a department directory, (based on pernames.ntf and shared with the department), sync to the Contacts section of the handheld.  In earlier versions of BES, users clamored for this same feature.  Well, one of the unexpected gems I picked up at BlackBerry admin training a couple of weeks ago was the ability to synchronize public contact lists like a department directory down to the Blackberry handhelds.  From what I was told, that Exchange thing was able to do it, but the functionality was not there in Domino.
New to BES 5 is the ability to provide to users this same option on Domino.  Win.  To configure the option, open your browser and log into the BAS server.  Follow these easy steps:  (Stolen from the online help!)
  1. In the BlackBerry® Administration Service, on the Servers and components menu, expand BlackBerry Solution topology > BlackBerry Domain > Component view.
  2. Click Email.
  3. Click Edit component.
  4. In the Published contact servers section, in the User synchronized public contact servers maximum field, type the maximum number of public contact databases that users can access from their BlackBerry devices. The default value is 20.
  5. In the Contact server name field, type the name of a contact server.(Servername/org/cert)
  6. In the Database name field, type the name of a public contact database.(database.nsf)
  7. Click the Add icon.
  8. Repeat steps 5 to 7 for each public contact database that you want to add.
  9. Click Save all.
After you finish: To permit BlackBerry device users to access the public contact databases that you specified, use the BlackBerry Administration Service to control which public contact databases users can access, or instruct users to use the BlackBerry® Desktop Manager or BlackBerry® Web Desktop Manager to select the available public contact databases.

There is one IMPORTANT bug with this process that I discovered with the help of RIM's support desk.  Like most Domino databases, you have the default security in the ACL set to No Access and users rights granted through the user of groups.  It doesn't work that way with this process.  The default ACL access must be set to reader OR the users must be listed in the ACL individually.   While it's kind of a pain in the butt doing it this way, it does work.  After RIM pinged away at it for a couple of weeks, I heard back Friday that it has listed it as a bug that will be fixed in a future release....but no word on which release. 
Still though, a great new feature for the product!

5 comments:

William said...

Just to be sure I understand this. By making these additional directories available for downloads to the BlackBerry device, are the contacts in the additional directories available for Caller ID and calling?

Thanks a bunch for the tip, very cool!

Andy Donaldson said...

Yes. They integrate right into the address book on the device and act just like your personal ones in there. I should have put that point across better in the blog entry. It really is a great feature!

Denny Russell said...

Andy, Good stuff here. I added it to my Blackberry Resources page. http://www.lotusdr.com/LotusDR/LotusDR.nsf/dx/blackberry-resources.htm/

pitpit said...

I Andy
Thank you for your post and Happy new year.

I would just ask you a question about multiple domino adrdress book on blackberry device.

When I add a new contact server by contact server name field , this server don't appear in available contact database section ;
Have you an idea about it please ?

Aurora Vanderbosch said...

I found this post when trying to determine whether or not this feature was availble for Blackberries...and thought I'd just add a link back to the original RIM KB on the subject, for those who need additional information on adding the Contact Dbs to individual users, after they've been defined:

http://docs.blackberry.com/en/admin/deliverables/22400/Synchronizing_folders_on_the_BB_device_522354_11.jsp

(I find it ironice that I found this blog entry first, rather than the RIM article. ;))