Posts Tagged: "Blackberry"

Blackberry Desktop Manager Incompatibility with Outlook 2010

The consulting community seems excited about Office 2010. There are lots of great features and some significant improvements. I’m writing today about a particular configuration issue that will only be applicable to people in Exchange environments that access another user’s folders.

In prior versions of Outlook, in order to see another user’s contacts in your “windows address book” you had to follow a convoluted 10 step process that was a nightmare to implement in any reasonable amount of time. Now we can simply add a second exchange account and see the additional address book. This is a big time saver.

With BES services, we can wirelessly sync your Blackberry to your Outlook folders. However sometimes we need to sync the Blackberry to a different folder, perhaps your boss’ contacts folder. Now we have to install Blackberry Desktop Manager and disable wireless sync on your contacts. Then we can specify an additional folder to sync.

Throughout the different versions of Outlook, there have been lots of issues with compatibility with Blackberry Desktop Manager, most notably in the scenario above, we cannot use cached exchange mode. But now with the release of Outlook 2010, the desktop manager won’t connect at all. There are various workarounds, none of which are realistic for consultants or clients for that matter.

I believe that this failure of RIM to stay in compatibility with what I consider their main partner is just another reason they’ll continue to lose users and market share. If I as a consultant, cannot do what my clients need and expect, then I won’t use or recommend the product anymore. The most frustrating part of this is that in many stores, I can no longer purchase Office 2007.

Smartphones – Part 1 of 3

In my work with clients, I have to know all the ins and outs of nearly every smartphone on the market. Over the years, I have been fortunate to experience firsthand all of these phones and help my clients bring convenience and mobility to their lives. Since I am mostly on the road every day, I also use a smartphone to stay in touch with my clients, my office and my email. Being in this position, my standards tend to be a little higher and I’m a bit more demanding of technology.  In this series, I’ll describe my experiences with each phone I’ve used in the past few years. I’d like to know what you think; perhaps we can all find a phone we’re happy with.

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.