[LBH3]

Hi everyone, I’ve heard this:

Treo - is a computer with a phone built into it
Blackberry – a phone with a computer built into it

I believed this, but with BES I just don’t know. In fact our users are so pissed off right now I don’t know what to tell them. I got a demo to try myself and now I see what they’re talking about –

The Address book on our enterprise activated blackberries IS A MESS!! How do I call someone? Sure, emailing with the lookup option is fine, but what If I want to call someone in the company? There’s a bunch of duplicate entries, and no telling which has a phone number inside (if any!)

I’ve searched here for GAL, GAL Filter, Custom GAL, address book, address book filter, googled it, nothing. What the heck are people doing to rein this in?

Thank you for reading my Rant.

[bbxpert]

The contact list in the blackberry will be the same as what is in the user's outlook. If there are duplicate enteries there, there will be duplicate entires in the blackberry. The user will have to clear the duplicate entires from their outlook contacts. Likely they sycn'd the device with contacts in it to an outlook with contacts which caused the device to dump its duplicate contacts into outlook. This happened to me a couple of times, you will want to always wipe a device before doing an activation since that will ensure this doesn't happen. Also I've done this to myself with a treo to on a wired sync so its not a black berry only type issue.

To look up from your company GAL, open the address book on the blackberry, then select the menu option, then select lookup. You can now do a look up from your Exchange GAL, much like you would in outlook such as jsmith.

This look will then appear in the contact list on the device with the [ ] around the name.

Hope that helps.

[hdawg]

Originally Posted by LBH3

Hi everyone, I’ve heard this:

Treo - is a computer with a phone built into it
Blackberry – a phone with a computer built into it

I believed this, but with BES I just don’t know. In fact our users are so pissed off right now I don’t know what to tell them. I got a demo to try myself and now I see what they’re talking about –

The Address book on our enterprise activated blackberries IS A MESS!! How do I call someone? Sure, emailing with the lookup option is fine, but what If I want to call someone in the company? There’s a bunch of duplicate entries, and no telling which has a phone number inside (if any!)

I’ve searched here for GAL, GAL Filter, Custom GAL, address book, address book filter, googled it, nothing. What the heck are people doing to rein this in?

Thank you for reading my Rant.

A BlackBerry is a computer with phone functionality. Use the lookup function, find the phone number and dial ... I don't see what is so hard with it. If the data returned is confusing you probably need to clean up your active directory.

[LBH3]

At the risk of sounding defensive - our AD is super-clean. It's our book of record, visible across the whole company and if any garbage data is introduced we have an extremely anal C level (CFO!) that points it out right away - believe me

I'll post back, I'm looking at my blackberry and the GAL isn't even on there. It's just my local outlook contacts.

[LBH3]

bbxpert, I did the lookup and it worked, I now have the GAL contact with the brackets around it - is there a way to pre-populate the GAL contacts on a users phone before I give it to them?

thanks.

[hdawg]

Originally Posted by LBH3

I'm looking at my blackberry and the GAL isn't even on there. It's just my local outlook contacts.

Correct, BB's do not sync the GAL locally.

[hdawg]

Originally Posted by LBH3

bbxpert, I did the lookup and it worked, I now have the GAL contact with the brackets around it - is there a way to pre-populate the GAL contacts on a users phone before I give it to them?

thanks.

This is now cached; you cannot populate permanently without the use of a 3rd party application.

[LBH3]

ok, thanks for the help hdawg - do you off the top of your head know a 3rd party app that assists with this?

[hdawg]

Here's one: SlipstreamSolutions.co.uk | Products | GALSync for Blackberry and Windows Mobile

[bertiebassett]

Originally Posted by LBH3

bbxpert, I did the lookup and it worked, I now have the GAL contact with the brackets around it - is there a way to pre-populate the GAL contacts on a users phone before I give it to them?

thanks.

I'm not convinced that's the right move to go down - show the users how to use lookup and then they don't need to synch contacts at all. With the lookup then by definition the data will always be upto date with the latest moves, adds or changes.

Ok so the thing you miss is the device "screen popping" fred when fred calls your cell #, but apart from that it does the business..

[d_fisher]

We have a web based version of our corporate address book and made a mobile optimized version of it. We pre-populate the link to it as the default home page for the MDS brower. Works extremely well.

[Berel_WRI]

I feel your pain, I ran into the same issue. A couple of options that we came up with:
1. Use a 3rd part app that copies the gal into peoples address book. i'd have to look back at some of the products we used, but can do that.
2. build an mds app that gives ppl this function.
3. wait for bes 5.0 (scheduled end of year) where public folder synchronization will be added. there are lots of cheap apps out there that will copy your gal to a public folder if you dont want to.
In the end, management decided they didnt want to spend the money and that people could just learn to do a lookup.

[LBH3]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply guys.

d_fisher - that's a great idea, however how did you make the page only accessible to your corporate users? I assume the web page isn't public? Are the entries cached after they use them?

thanks again