Merging two worlds – aka some Blackberry magic

I have a client who has been happily using hosted exchange for several years now. I configured his assistant’s computers to access his calendar and contacts. His Blackberry is wirelessly synced using BES so any entries his assistant makes are immediately available on his device. Recently this client took a high level city position. With less than a day’s notice, we needed to find a way to get his contacts over to the city, but stripped of confidential information.

This new setup posed quite a challenge from both a technical and an administrative point of view. Challenge 1: We couldn’t coordinate all the needed information and technology in one place. Challenge 2: My client’s personal data was stored in Outlook and the City used Novell, so we couldn’t simply import a CSV export from Outlook.

The Solution: The one common denominator was the Blackberry. I rallied the troops and coordinated the IT efforts between the existing setup and the City’s completely different configuration. The City wanted to upload his existing contacts into his City account, but before we did that, we needed to strip out any confidential information that was kept in the notes field.

Of course these situations rarely offer time to plan them carefully so this entire project was completed in about 4 hours. Here is the high level overview of the steps I took. Note that these were all completed without stepping foot outside my office.

1.       Ask admin to remove any contacts that were unnecessary or contained account numbers.

2.       Remote to admin, export contacts folder into .pst file (an Outlook Personal Storage file holds important data like e-mail and contacts).

3.       Compress the file and email it to myself.

4.       Save the file, unzip it, attach it to Outlook, export it to CSV file, strip out the notes field, re-import it to the .pst file, verify no data in notes field.

5.       Install and configure Blackberry desktop manager, find unused Blackberry from my tech stash, plug it in and sync it to the new contacts folder sans notes.

6.       Unplug, verify data. Replug and run a Blackberry backup.

7.       Save the backup file, compress it and email it to the City.

8.       City restored the file onto an unused Blackberry, then reversed my process except they imported the data into Novell and later to Google which is now handling email, calendar and contacts for the City.

Wow, what a day. Moving forward, he’ll maintain a personal Blackberry still connected to Exchange via BES and a separate “City” Blackberry. It’s not a perfect system but it’s pretty darn close.