[johnny_boy_uk]

Hello, I wonder if anyone can answer this question for me.

I have a newly installed BES 5.0.2 and Exchange 2010 in a domain in a resource forest that I've just started doing some testing with before we migrate both our Blackberry and Exchange users to from our current BES 4.1.6 / Exchange 2007 environment (which currently sits in a separate single domain forest with trusts to the new resource forest).

The new Exchange 2010 environment is not currently configured for external internet email. It can only send email internally between the mailboxes created on it and listed in its GAL. I know this means wireless enterprise activation of a Blackberry handheld is out of the question with this configuration as the mailbox needs to receive the etp.dat attachment in an email from blackberry.net, but what I can't seem to find any information on is should a wired USB activation of a Blackberry handheld still work with Exchange only able to email internally?

I have tried a wired USB activation of a handheld with both Blackberry Desktop Manager on a client PC in the same Domain as BES 5 / Exchange 2010 and also by using the Blackberry Web Desktop Manager on the same client PC. Although they both recognise the PIN of the connected device the activation process fails to even begin. Blackberry Desktop Manager acts as if it can not see that the BES has the user added as a Blackberry user by stating that "Your email account (user@domain.com) is not associated with a Blackberry Enterprise Server" and offering to set the user up with the Blackberry Desktop Redirector instead while BES 5's Blackberry Web Desktop Manager just spits out "The Blackberry Web Desktop Manager is unable to complete this action. Please contact your administrator for more information" - a fairly useless erorr message when you are the administrator! ;)

Does any body know if a wired USB activation should be achievable in an internal email only Exchange evironment? Is the lack of external internet email functionality related to the Desktop Manager's acting as if they can't see the Users that have been added to the BES (perhaps because they try to resolve their SMTP email addresses externally rather than matching their names against the GAL?) It could very well be two different problems I'm looking at here so is there a log file for the Blackberry Web Desktop Manager so I can see a more useful error message for the failed wired activations?

It may not be possible for us to setup the new Exchange 2010 environment for internet email before we run out of time and have to migrate to it (saying good bye to our Exchange 2007 / BES 4.6.1 environments) so I need to get testing BES / Blackberry handheld functionality for the new environment as quickly as I can so I know it works well in advance.

Many thanks for any help given!

[m_smith161]

Hi Johnny

Is the PC you're attempting to activate from in the live or test domain? If the former, are the trusts sufficient to allow communication between the PC and BES?

Matt

[johnny_boy_uk]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your reply. The PC I was activating from was in the test domain, the same domain as Exchange 2010 and BES 5.

I now know the answer to my question, yes it is possible to do a wired USB activation of a handheld when your Exchange environment has no connections to send/receive email to/from the outside world.

I've only just been able to confirm this with a test Blackberry as I had some permissions related configuration problems to fix for the BESAdmin service account on the Exchange side first. IEMSTest is now happy with the configuration.

The mailbox my test Blackberry activated successfully against over USB was a mail-enabled User in the same domain as Exchange 2010 and BES 5. My next test will be to activate a Blackberry against a Linked Mailbox, where the User account is in another trusted domain (not a child domain in the Resource Forest) while its mailbox in Exchange 2010 is in the same domain as BES 5. The mailbox is linked to the User account in the other Domain by a disabled User account in the Exchange 2010 / BES 5 domain. This is the Resource Forest configuration that the end-users will have for accessing their mailboxes, it's tested and working for Outlook, just need to confirm that I can activate a device against such a mailbox. I may need to enable the disabled link-user in the Resource Forest for activation to work, I'll put my findings on here for other people to reference.