[jamieaa64]

We currently have to use Goodlink to deal with our company's push e-mail service because we have most company contacts in a public contacts folder. Personal contacts are for non-work related contacts. This seems so obviously the way to do things. But for some reason it seems like this is a non-standard practise because both blackberry and exchange do not support wireless syncing of public contacts and microsoft are even phasing out public folders in the next version!

I can see why microsoft are doing that (moving onto sharepoint folders) but no one syncs sharepoint contacts yet. So we're stuck. What shocks me is that no one else seems stuck.

So my question:
Why do you IT admins not use exchange public contacts?How does your company deal with a shared contacts list and how do you get that list onto your phones?

[gibson_hg]

When it comes to shared or public lists of contacts they have to be manually synced using DTM. That is the only option.

Lots of places use public contacts but they don't bother syncing them. Keep in mind that when you wirelessly sync public contacts that everytime a change is made whether it be a new contact, a deleted contact or an update that every HH will get that update. That is a lot of traffic for BES and Exchange.

Also, imagine a public folder of contacts containing 10,000 entries or more. Now, imagine activating 300 users that all want those contacts.

Have fun with that!

Also, a BB maybe able to store as many contacts as the memory will allow but the contacts DB on the HH can only handle so much. I'm not sure if that changed in newer firmware but I talked to a guy once who had 16,000 contacts on his 8700. While he could view the contacts the search/lookup option did not work.

Most users have only a few hundred contacts, while some do have over 1000, 200-300 is the norm. The more contacts you allow your users to have the more traffic and heavier load you bring onto your servers.

[knottyrope]

We use public folders and sync it to outlook in favorites.

It is supported in 2007 which will work for like 5-10 years down the road, dont sweat over it now.

Look at this post here how our users update from it, it only takes seconds to do.

http://www.blackberryforums.com/bes-...cts-users.html

[H.Nayl]

MS would rather forget public folders ever existed. Thats why it's now a legacy feature :P

[jamieaa64]

Originally Posted by gibson_hg

Have fun with that!

We do! :P

Originally Posted by H.Nayl

MS would rather forget public folders ever existed. Thats why it's now a legacy feature :P

Would you be able to shed some light on that? To me public folders seem so obviously great and the way most companies should run (apart from the new sharepoint folders which are awesome just not supported with mobiles yet). Even if its a link or the kind of stuff I should search for!

@Knotty
Thanks, I was thinking of something similar to that.

Anyone else? How do you deal with public contacts (if you use them?)

[CanuckBB]

Originally Posted by jamieaa64

We do! :P



Would you be able to shed some light on that? To me public folders seem so obviously great and the way most companies should run (apart from the new sharepoint folders which are awesome just not supported with mobiles yet). Even if its a link or the kind of stuff I should search for!

MS would like to steer you to Sharepoint. Exchange public folders are clinky and can be a replication nightmare in larger enterprises. They are also somewhat clinky to access

@Knotty
Thanks, I was thinking of something similar to that.

Anyone else? How do you deal with public contacts (if you use them?)[/QUOTE]

We add them as contacts in AD.

[guppy413]

Every Exchange Public Folder has an URL. You could set up HTTP authentication on the MDS-CS, give out that link and let their BlackBerrys browse to it. It won't synch, but it will at least get them to the page.

[udontknowjack]

We use Outlook PCS to sinc public folders. you can search for it. It is older but works with Outlook 2007. basically, it copies the contents of the public folder to your contact list and add the category OutlookPCS so you can easily filter them on the BB if you want. The only issue is that you have to periodically click the button in Outlook to have it copy the contents over and then the public folder contents are in with the rest of your contacts but since they have the category set, it is easy to seperate them or even remove them if needed. It has worked well for us for years. This way, I still have my public folder contacts on my BB and it is done wirelessly.

[knottyrope]

Outlook PCS is a sweet find!!!

This can help eliminate many calls for me.

Thanks so much for posting this!!!

[ThomasB]

Tried Outlook PCS and got an install error that I need an Office 2000 product. Thus it appears it does not work with Outlook 2007.

There is a message that it in fact does work. Is it just a matter of tricking it to install?


Tom

[knottyrope]

Sorry we are on Outlook 2003.

Is that Windows Mobile in your pocket? : Getting Windows Mobile to work with Outlook Contact Sub Folders (Outlook PCS)

[whickie]

Shared content in Exchange is very common request, and not just for contacts-- calendars too.

WICKSoft (www.wicksoft.com) provides a solution for Exchange 2003 that will let you view/edit public and delegate content from your BlackBerry.

It's not synch or a 'copy to your personal folders' solution-- as gibson_hg pointed out, this could be a problem if you have a lot of contacts or a very busy shared calendar. Instead, it's a direct interface to Exchange, not BES. The advantage to this is that anything you change on the phone gets updated on Exchange immediately.

You can get an trial copy over at our website.

Will

[lwong]

We use itrezzo to publish our company address book to our Exchange Contacts.
- Whenever someone joins/leaves the company, their info is automatically added/removed from everyone's Exchange Contacts
- Because it's in our Contacts rather than just in the GAL, we always know the name of the employee that's calling us.

[kenjancef]

I manage a BB server in a corporation with 13 users, and they ALL use Public Calendars. It is a pain in the butt!!! I have to use DTM with all of them, and a lot of times when I set up a new device or replace one for an existing user, sometimes I cannot turn off wireless calendar sync.

If anyone out there has a clue on that it would be VERY helpful to me.


Thanks!!!!!

Ken

[jamieaa64]

I can see why Microsoft would prefer the use of sharepoint contacts. But there is even less support for syncronising of sharepoint contacts with mobiles!!!

Also our public contacts folder is over 9000 contacts. So copying them to personal contacts folders is not really an option! (That means we'd have 300*9000 copies of contacts floating around on exchange!)

Every Exchange Public Folder has an URL. You could set up HTTP authentication on the MDS-CS, give out that link and let their BlackBerrys browse to it. It won't synch, but it will at least get them to the page.

Am I right in guessing that they cannot dial from that page?

[leda]

We had this problem for a long time but I finally got a solution -

We use a product called GeniusConnect to sync public folders with our employees contact folders. Technically both public contact folders and user contact folders are synced from a SQL datasource but you could easily sync user contacts with public contacts.

We even have rough support for multiple contact lists from the BB and Outlook. The public contacts are stored in a subfolder of the user's contacts. Both lists get synced to the BB and if an employee adds a new contact on their BB, it goes to their private contact list.

I currently have 19,220 contacts in my contact folder. Roughly ~200 are personal and the rest are public.

If you want some pictures to help you understand, let me know.

[knottyrope]

please post the pics

[jamieaa64]

thanks for the reply leda!

Just out of interest what kind of specs do you need for your exchange server to be able to run something like that well? And roughly how many employees does this go out to (for us it would be roughly 200-300)

We have 3 offices where public contacts are replicated between them. Only 10,000 public contacts compared to your almost 20,000 and already find public contacts are incredibly slow. So the main reason we have been against the idea of syncronising public contacts is that it might clog up the exchange server.

Also how fast are changes replicated? If someone makes a change to public contacts are they push to the user's handsets automatically or do you have to set up a timed refresh?

Thanks

[jamieaa64]

WICKSoft provides a solution for Exchange 2003 that will let you view/edit public and delegate content from your BlackBerry.

Wicksoft looks very cool! I suppose there is no windows mobile version :P (wrong forum I know!)

On further looking it is still not quite as intuitive as using normal contacts. You have to know which contacts list to search in every time. Rather then just have IT select which sharepoint and public contacts to use, then have it so you just have to type a name and it finds the correct contact.

[freakinvibe]

BES 5.0 comes with native public folder support (from BES 5.0 Feature and Technical Overview):

View and use contacts in public folders

Users with BlackBerry Device Software version 5.0 or later can view and use contacts
in public folders from their BlackBerry devices, and copy the contacts to their contact
lists. Users can only view the public folders that they have the appropriate
permissions for.
Users can specify which public folders they want to synchronize to their BlackBerry
devices using the BlackBerry Desktop Manager or BlackBerry Web Desktop
Manager. You can limit the number of public folders that users can synchronize to
their BlackBerry devices.