BlackBerry® Enterprise Solution

[negative]

Hello all....

I have about 300 users on a BES server and I need to make the GAL available to them when they do not have an active data connection... does anyone have a solution for this?

I saw D_Fishers post about trying this method... has anyone else tried this?

How do we get the Exchange GAL to download to the device so we don't have to do lookups? The Treo is nice because the GAL is always there and lookups aren't necessary. It is much quicker than having to do a lookup every time you want to send a message to someone internally.
Technicall you could, but since the BlackBerry only has one address book the users wouldn't have a personal address book. My company uses what I consider a better solution. We created a simple mobile optimized website to search our corporate directory. We force that bookmark as the MDS browser home page.

I have looked at Epicenter (Expensive) - http://www.connectedsw.com/Overview/57261, Slipstream (Didnt really like it)- http://www.slipstreamsolutions.co.uk/products/GALSyncServer.htm and another 1 I cant remember right now.

At this point I would be happy with something which can copy the GAL or Public folder to a subfolder in the users main contact folder in outlook which should in turn replicate with the Blackberry.

Thanks 

[AndyDufresne]

You need to use one of the solutions you've listed.

BES does not support this natively

[negative]

But from whoever already has this in place... what do you this is the best, cost effective, minimal user intervention required method? And how did you do it?

1. The MDS route which D_Fisher mentioned (will it be available offline?)

2. Get something to create a subfolder in everyones mailbox and sync thte GAL or public folder to that (which software?)

3. 3rd party software to do everything automatically for you (the best one I found was epicenter which is about $25000)

4. Tell them to use lookups (they laughed at me and told me to find another way because they hate lookups)

Numbers 1 and 2 are my preferred method if we can get it to work... othwerwise will have to go with the third option.

Thanks.

[AndyDufresne]

d_fisher's method will not allow the GAL to be offline.

Of the rest, I can't recommend any.  Every customer and the 50,000+ handhelds I work with uses the lookup function.

[negative]

Thats what I told my director and he deems that answer unacceptable... any other suggestions?

PS... I myself am a firm beleiver in the lookup function and also think that if a user really needs a contact that bad when they are at the cottage and out of the coverage area they should have added the contact manually to their address book.

But what I think does not matter unless they agree with a solution acceptable to them...

Does anyone here have any third party software in place which handles this... for now I think im just going to recommend the Epicenter software unless someone else has tried something else which they think is better.

[AndyDufresne]

I looked at this a while ago: GALSyncServer.

Can't speak much of it as I really only used it for a few hours, but it'll do what you want for less than the 25k you were looking at with epicenter.

[negative]

Thanks Andy... will try out the Demo when I have some time and see how it works out.

[knottyrope]

Our soulution was to Keep a personnel list in publicfolders and add to each contact a category called personnel list.

Then show each BB user how to sort by category in their contacts folder.

Then they can delete the old entries via category and copy over the personell list to contacts once a month.

Also you can tell the BB to lookup via group of personnel list or whatever categories they have.

Not the best solution but it works very well offline for BB and windows mobile.

This also teaches the user how to better manage their contacts via categories.

Also we have outlook do lookups in the personell list (copy to favorites and enable address book) and not use GAL.

HR can manage it easier from a public folder too.

[negative]

Thanks knotty, but that will not work... we already have public folders will all employees and we require something which needs little or preferbly no user intervention... Plus people get promoted / move on / transferred on a weekly basis here.

[knottyrope]

goto contacts

View arrange by category

Delete catagory personnel list

Goto public folders/personnel list

highlight first user

press ctrl a

Drag drop into contact folder

is this easy enough?

60+ users here can handle it.