Device Synchronization

[christopher123]

Hi everyone

We've began a slow migration from our BES and locally hosted exchange server to the cloud service offered by RIM in and Microsoft Online 365.

Our first batch of users migrated today and we have found that some of them, perhaps all of them, are having issues syncing their calendar entries.

We moved all of their old settings into new profiles using a .pst file. Looking online, all of their entries have been imported successfuly, so it doesn't appear to be a problem with Office 365 or Outlook. Commonly, only 1 - 5 entries will show up in the blackberry but Outlook on their PC and online will show all of their entries.

I've tried setting the reconciliation to wireless no then yes, battery pull, deleting the user and adding again on the BAS, wiping the BB and starting fresh but always this calendar issue appears.

We're moving over the rest of the office over the next month and would like to prevent this issue from happening in the future, so any help you can provide will be great.

Thanks
Chris

[TechRelate]

Hi Christopher,

I feel your pain. We have the same issue with all migrated users - since two weeks back - whom have no imported  calender entries showing on handheld - but show in outlook.

Blackberry support suggested a minor edit would make them show - not the case all entries have to be completely created from scratch. Having exported celenders to excel i'm looking at around 150-200 entries per user to manually re-create - most of which involve others and i just cannot re-create those ones.

I can't find a suitabel workaround right now:

1) create duplicate entires in each users OWA calender along side current events - what about changes - duplicate entries are left behind - this makes htings more confusing that having no info

2) Import calender to new clean outlook profile and use blackberry desktop software to import to handheld - this still doesn't allow updates to show.

Anyone else got any thoughts? I understood this service was out of Beta - well it shouldnt be!

Julian Fox

[TechRelate]

After another couple of hours on the phone to RIM via Off365 support team. No update on this issue at present - but I did get the internal Development task number: 2407350.
You'd think Microsoft would be lending a hand to get this resolved, whilst all i can tell my rightfully Angry users is that if they had had iPhones, iPad's, Windows mobiles, Andriod or even Symbian Nokia mobile devices full sync would work in minutes.
This is another blow of many to the already shaken Blackberry platform - the kids don't like them because they turn of bbm, light email users have to put up with provider based BIS interfaces which are a nightmare to administer and corporate users who have previously paid tens of thousands of pounds for on premise software licensing then migrate to the cloud as a result of the BETA being closed on Jan 30th and then loose any historic and immediate calendar entries on the handheld. Oh and even then deleting something in your outlook calender is likely to pop up because of Sync issues. what a joke.

[TechRelate]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15243892

[jimjones3]

Hello,

I've also got a user who is trying out the Blackberry Cloud services now that it's IN PRODUCTION (haha).  However, with the lack of support from RIM (other than paying a $1500 upgrade), I must turn to the wise folks in the forum community.

We got the device to sync using Desktop Manager since the Web Desktop and the over-the-air didn't work as directed.  But now, the calendar won't sync.

In the Web ADMIN SERVICE, I see that the user and the device are communicating - there are packets going back and forth and the date/time is current for updates.  But the calendar won't sync.

When I look at the user in the ADMIN SERVICE, under COMPONENTS the wireless calendar is set to ACTIVATED.

One thing that may help is that the device had a previous activation with an on-prem BES server.  When we changed activation to BBCLOUD, it said it was cleaing the previous activation and replacing it with the cloud one.

Any ideas on how to get the Calendar starting to sync?

Thanks

jim

[TechRelate]

Hi Jim,

The only solution at present which is only 95% effective for some unknown reason if to shift the time of an appointment - i have been manually changing clients appointments by bringing them forward by 1 minute. I have steered clear of a wired sync for now as i am worried this will create lots of calendar data that won't update if changes are made at source - could be more risky than having no info.

The official response from Blackberry today remains:

BlackBerry® Business Cloud Services for Microsoft® Office® 365 DT 2407350

Resolution: This is a previously reported issue that is being investigated by our development team. No resolution time frame is currently available.

Workaround: After a failed Enterprise Activation, or another slow synchronization of the calendar, the only known way to get the calendar items on the BlackBerry® device is to manual edit the item.  If a new calendar slow synchronization is triggered, the user will be back in a broken state again.

My enterprise activations worked ok but still no historic data shows and only 95% of it shows after doing manual edit's - still I don't think manual edit of all appointments across the board is a suitable workaround.

Julian

[christopher123]

Thanks everyone for having a think - glad we're not alone.

We had a good test in our department here and came to a conclusion that the problem was coming from the Blackberry not picking up appointments which were already in the calendar. Previously our process was this:

1. User transfers old emails to their new account on Portal.microsoftonline.com

2. User activates Blackberry

3. Cry

We too discovered that by manually changing the calendar items it forced a change on the Blackberry. We wrote a script which the user clicks on which manually adds a letter, saves, then takes away a letter at the end of the subject line. This worked great.

Now we've changed our procedure to this order:

1. User activates Blackberry

2. User transfers old emails to their new account on portal.microsoftonline.com

3. Battery pull/reconcile e-mails

Hopefully this method will work for you guys.

Chris

[TechRelate]

Chris,

Sounds like you're having a better time of it than us. So much so i couldn't hold back the tweet last weekend: TechRelate @Office365 please put @BlackBerry Cloud Services back into BETA if It's not ready..

Any chance we could take a look at your script? We'd be uber grateful.

Regards,

Julian

[jimjones3]

So we managed to get this resolved by working with Blackberry technical support.

1) Call Microsoft Online support and ask them to setup the case with Blackberry.  Blackberry cloud support is supposed to be free for Office 365 users.

2) Once I got connected with Blackberry support, they had me try the following:

    -  

Go into calendar on device

Click menu/options

Choice for desktop calendar - highlight it only

Then type RSET

Request for confirmation - set OK or YES

Test to see if the issue is present

If that doesn’t resolve it is to:

On device, delete service books : CICAL (desktop) then I resend service books

3) None of those above items fixed the issue, only new items and changed items were coming through.

4) Had Blackberry support contact the user directly.  They had him connect the device to the computer via USB and use Blackberry Desktop Manager.  From there, they removed and re-added the calendar and now everything updates wirelessly.

I wish I had more information about why this happened or the detailed steps Blackberry support performed, but I don't.

At least I know that I can contact Microsoft Online support and get the case opened with Blackberry to resolve the issue.

Hope this helps.

-jim

[TechRelate]

Wow nice1 Jim. We'll be trying this tomorrow and update with results.

Thanks,

Julian