Summary …
  

Well, this is going a short post … nothing fancy: just a heads-up to tell you that if the Unique ID of your Person Doc in the Domino Directory changes, for one reason or another, you won’t be able to log into the BlackBerry Administration service (BAS) anymore. Your device will not stop working … it’s just that you won’t be able to log into the BAS because it uses your UNID for lord-knows-what during authentication.
  

I/we discovered this the hard way when me and Patrick were playing around with the Business Cards feature in Sametime and I ended-up doing a copy-paste of our person docs from the test environment directory into the production environment directory and deleting our “original” person documents to leave the new ones in place.
  

Soon after we realized that we couldn’t login to the BAS (at the worst time too – the CIO’s BlackBerry had stopped working … but that’s another story).
  

After opening a ticket with BlackBerry support, we learned about this “feature”.
  

Keep in mind that this only affects people who are setup to have access to the BlackBerry Administration Service … normal users who only have a profile on the BES server to sync up their BlackBerry aren’t affected if their Person Doc UNID changes.
  

The Solution …
  

Well, simply put: make sure to never to delete and replace your person document in the Domino Directory … because that will change your Person Doc UNID. If you want to try something, you can probably use ScanEZ of YTria’s o change the UNID of the new document back to the UNID of the old document (but I can’t be sure if it will do the trick or not).
  

OR … if you have no choice: simply login with the BES server admin account into the BAS and delete your user profile, re-create it and re-activate your phone. That’s what Patrick and I ended up doing.
   

However … maybe, just maybe there is a way to crack open the BESMgmt database in the back-end and figure out where that information is stored and update it using an SQL command … but I really really really didn’t want to do that.
  

Thanks for reading!
  

Marc

Summary
  

Frank Sinatra wrote, in his timeless song “My Way”, two lines that have always stuck with me: “Regrets I’ve had a few … But then again too few to mention”. And, fortunately for me, I feel the same way. However, there is 1 thing I very deeply regret. And just what it is that I feel the need to mention?
  

Well, it’s quite simple: it’s upgrading my BES server from 4.1.6 MR5 to 5.0 MR3.
 

Don’t get me wrong, BES 5.0 is rock solid. You can probably throw rocks at it (figuratively of course) and it will stay up. Unlike my previous 4.1.6 server, in 4 months of usage, I haven’t had to vnc into the server to restart the BlackBerry Policy service (it used to stop for no particular reason) and that saves me from the occasional helpdesk call from people who can’t activate their shiny new phone. Another thing I also like about BES 5.0 is the fact that I haven’t had (yet) to manually update the device.xml and vendor.xml files to get the aforementioned shiny new phones to work with the server.
 

But you might wonder why I regret doing the BES 5.0 upgrade … and the answer is very simple: I miss the BES Administrator client that was bundled in the 4.1.6 version.
 

Slowly Getting Somewhere …
 

So, instead of an Administration client that you install on your own computer (or simply use the one on the server using vnc), the new BES 5.0 has this web based Administrative interface called the “BlackBerry Administration Service” … or “BAS” for short.
 

And it’s horrible.
 

Ok, sure, having a web based interface means that I can log into the BAS interface from any computer in the office to do whatever I need to do … however, I’m usually chained to my desk from the moment I walk into work so this is a moot point for me.
  

And for those of us in the Lotus Domino Administration arena who’ve used the slick, fast and incredibly cool Domino Web Administrator interface, logging into the BAS feels like looking at a Geocities page, circa 1998, minus the “Under Construction” animated gifs and banner ads. In fact, if you ask me, the BAS interface should have one of those “under construction” animated gifs … it needs it.
  

But there’s hope! I presume that I’m not the only one who dearly misses his old BES 4.1.6 Administrator client and, maybe, some people more important than me were able to convince the development team at BlackBerry to improve the BAS a bit for Service Pack 1.
  

So, after installing the BES 5.0 Service Pack 1, I noticed something new on the “View User” screen: with SP1 you don’t need to click through the many tabs of the interface to figure out which policy is applied to the phone, who’s the phone carrier, what type of phone the employee has and when was the last time the policy was sent … it’s all there on the main page … so we’re slowly getting somewhere with this BAS thing … see for yourself the example below:
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
Parting words …
  
Before you think that BES 5.0 is crap, please think again. From my experience, so far and without using any of the high-availability features, BES 5.0 is an extremely solid and well performing server. The BAS interface is the only sore spot for me … I really miss being able to view all my users at once, being able to customize the users view, for example, to add columns that I need to see who had which software configuration just to name two things. I presume that, in time, Research in Motion will improve the BAS … time will tell.
  

Oh and one last thing: never ever ever ever ever change the Windows machine hostname of your BES 5.0 server (unless you enjoy pain) … the BAS interface just stops working afterwards and you need to re-install your server software to get it to work again. You’ve been warned …

Summary

For the 3rd weekend in a row, you are at work … except that this weekend you are doing an in-place upgrade of your BlackBerry Eenterprise Server V4.1.6 MR5 to V5.0 MR2. The upgrade itself goes smoothly and after a couple of reboots and some nail-biting moments … the server is up and running and doing fine.  Now, there were some issues and I had to call BlackBerry Support 3 times along the way but in the end, everything works.

Just in case you are planning to upgrade to BlackBerry Enterprise Server V5.0 MR2 sometime near future, here’s what I’ve learned (the hard way).

Lessons Learned …

1. Kiss your good ol’ BlackBerry Admin client good-bye. Yep, I know … you’ve grown fond of it but it’s time to it let go. It’s been replaced by a new web-based interface called “The BlackBerry Administration Services (BAS)”. Now, here’s the problem: it runs as 2 windows services on your BES server (or on the computer where you installed that evil contraption) and you *cannot* set them to run using the local system account. They must absolutely be set to login with an account from your domain. This is actually written in the BlackBerry Enterprise Server V5.0 Upgrade Guide. But, as I was on the phone with a BES support rep trying to figure out a problem related to BAS, he asked me to set them all to login with the local system account. I figured he knew what he was talking about so I did. And from that point on, we could not login back into the BlackBerry Administration services web interface. No joy at all. It only started to work again when I’ve set the BAS services to work using the domain admin user id and pwd.

2. You will loose ALL your Software Configurations. All. Of. Them. Kiss them goodbye one last time before you start the installer. Better yet, take a screenshot of the Software Configuration screen in your BlackBerry Administrator client V4.1.x for reference because you’ll need it later. Trust me. Seriously, after the upgrade, the jar files for your software configurations are still on the hard drive but when you log into the BAS and try to push an app to a device … you’ve got nothing to push anymore! They’re all gone! So, another fun call to BlackBerry and they confirmed that you need to RECREATE all your software configurations. Guess where that screenshot you took comes in handy?

3. Remember all those nice columns that you had set in the “Users” view of your BlackBerry Administrator client version 4.1.x? You know, the columns which enabled you, at a glance, to view which carrier your users are on, their device model, their device os level, the last software configuration you assigned to them, the status of the software configuration push, etc, etc? Well … kiss them goodbye as well. The “Manage Users” view of the BAS service is hardcoded to only display the name of the person, the device pin, the current policy applied to the device, the device model and the last contact time. That’s it. That’s all. You can’t add columns and you can’t hack the server either to display those columns (yet). Oh and did I mention that you can’t click on a column header to sort like in the full blown admin client? Now you know. Wait, there’s more! I forgot to mention: you can’t do a search to view who’s got which software configuration assigned to them! This is a major step backwards …

Conclusion …

Well, I had read the admin guide and upgrade guide and had not read anything about those limitations … learn from my lessons … Seriously, I think my next post will be on how to re-create the Software Configurations.

Summary

If you have a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) in your company, it’s almost guaranteed that one day, the CEO will show up at your desk with a new BlackBerry Storm, the CFO will show up also at your desk with a new BlackBerry Bold and the VP of HR will, just to be different, catch you in a corridor with a new BlackBerry Tour and they’ll all ask you the same question:

“Hey, can you push the BlackBerry Enterprise Messenger (Sametime client) to my new device?”.

Since you like your job (and also because you want to keep it) you answer “Sure, let me do that right now!”. And why would you answer anything different? Of course you can give that answer, and with confidence too, because you’ve already configured multiple versions of the Enterprise Messenger on your BES server … right?

The Problem

The folks at Research in Motion (RIM) like their Java: they’ve built the devices around the Java Platform and the software running on it is no exception. The BlackBerry Enterprise Messenger that they developed for Lotus Sametime and MS Exchange is also built in Java. However, and this is where it gets weird, the RIM programmers created different version of the Enterprise Messenger for different types of devices.

Yep, if you go to the RIM’s web site download link and try to grab the latest version of the BlackBerry Enterprise Messenger, you’ll notice a confusing array of versions. There are different versions for different OS levels. There’s one for devices running the 4.7 OS (BB Tour), there’s another for the Storm and finally another version which fits every other device out there. Now the question is: “can you deploy the version for the Storm to the other devices?”.  The answer is “No”. The 2nd question is then “well, can you deploy the version from the “normal” devices to the Storm?”. Probably … but the end results might not be usable.

So, what do you do? Of course you download all 3 versions and follow the steps to create a software package on your server. But, as you’ll soon discover, the BES server doesn’t like to have 3 different versions of the same exact software in it’s shared folder. In fact, you’ll be able to create the 1st software package but not the 2nd … why is that? It turns out it has something to do with Java and the naming convention for the jar files.

Ok, now seriously, what do you do? We’ll, you follow RIM’s very own instructions!

The Solution

To get around the problem described above, RIM published Knowledge Base article #KB17431 that describes how a system admin can create software packages for different versions of the same application.  The KB article says that it’s for MS Exchange but it’s the exact same steps for a server running in a Lotus Domino infrastructure. As you’ll see in the KB article, the solution isn’t rocket science BUT it does involve creating new shared directories to put each version in it (hereby separating them from one another) and then copying the app loader folder into each new shared directory. There is no point in re-typing the entire KB article from RIM in here, so simply click on the link to read it up:

Link to KB17331: Create two software configurations for different versions of an application

By following their instructions, you will be able to create packages for each version of the BlackBerry Enterprise Messenger.

But wait … There’s Another Problem just around the corner!

So, after creating the new software packages and pushing the right version to the CEO’s BlackBerry, your BES Admin client (or the web interface if you are at version 5.0) says something like “Device Not Recognized” or “Device Not Supported” in the Configuration Status screen. Once again, you contemplate sending-in your resignation letter (which you again conveniently updated a few days earlier following another horrific server upgrade) but you decide against that idea and roll up your sleeves to figure out what’s wrong this time.

After a few minutes of troubleshooting it hits you! When did you apply your last Maintenance Release o your server? Months ago? Yep, thought so. And when was this shiny new BlackBerry released? Last week? Ahhh … that probably means that the device.xml and vendor.xml file in your C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research In Motion\Shared\AppLoader folder are “old” and need a refresh.

But where do you get updated device.xml and vendor.xml files? Once again, the good folks at Research In Motion have created a Knowledge Base article (KB13589) that you can open and download the latest and greatest xml files from. Here’s the link:

Link to KB13589: How to update the device.xml and vendor.xml files

Once you get the new vendor.xml and device.xml files, simply overwrite the ones on your server (in every AppLoader folder!). Now, do you think you’re out of the woods? Nope … not so fast! Once you have updated the xml files, you need to go back to each AppLoader folder in a command prompt and re-issue the “apploader /reindex” command. That will re-create the config files in each software package folder and then you’ll finally be able to re-push the application to the CEO’s BlackBerry.

But wait (x2) … The Nightmare Isn’t Over! There’s (yet) Another Problem! 

Now, the software package deployment worked like a charm for the CEO (BB Storm) and for the VP of HR (BB Curve) but it’s just not working for the CFO (BB Tour)… why? Your BlackBerry Admin client says “OK” for the status for the software configuration package to the CFO but he just doesn’t see it anywhere on his BlackBerry Tour. You even asked him to do the good ol’ battery pull trick just to be safe but it didn’t help. So, what’s the problem this time? Well, it turns out that, if you downloaded one of the first packages they putted out for the BlackBerry Tour, there was a problem with the zip file! In this particular case, RIM did not provide me with a Knowledge Base article: they simply emailed me the following instructions (remember that before doing this, you need to update the vendor.xml and device.xml files):

1. Assign the user a software configuration of ‘None’ to remove the link to the Tour Sametime Configuration.
2. Go into the Sametime folder you created, and delete files below.

     sametime_de.470
     sametime_en.470
     sametime_es.470
     sametime_fr.470
     sametime_it.470
     sametime_ja.470

Note: Ensure all the 470.alx files are removed

3. Open the command prompt and navigate to the appropriate Apploader folder and run loader /reindex
4. Confirm if the PKG and XML files have updated with the latest modified time (Around the time you run the loader command)
5. Navigate to this folder C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\PackageCache. Remove the 470.alx files again.
6. Once this is done. Create the software configuration for the BlackBerry Tour on the BlackBerry Manager. Ensure to apply the required policy to it and the delivery mode to Wireless.
7. Assign the intended user the software configuration for the BlackBerry Tour and then deploy the application for them by right clicking on the user as well.

Conclusion …

The BlackBerry Enterprise Server is one mighty powerful piece of software. It’s what allows the link between your company’s mail servers and your (addictive) BlackBerry device. The BlackBerry Enterprise Messenger is what allows you to “chat” with other employees from your phone … why would someone want to do that instead of just calling the other person? Well, I guess there are times when it’s more useful to chat than to call (like at the opera I guess?). Configuring the BlackBerry Enterprise Messenger software packages is one of the nicest thing you can do to save yourself time and effort … but as you’ve read there are some pitfalls and some problems to overcome but the effort is well worth the blood sweat and tears, err, I mean the payback.