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BlackBerry Wireless Contact Synchronization Free BlackBerry Technical information for BES Administration

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The following pages are meant as a reference to BlackBerry Administrators or Technical support staff. The information below is not specific to the itrezzoAgent server or the itrezzoAgent Personality Engine for the BlackBerry handheld. However, the itrezzoAgent EPS feature makes significant use of the BlackBerry OTA (Over-TheAir) contact synchronization, we often get to assist our customers in this area and thus, we have compiled these pages. Even if you are not an itrezzo customer, we hope that you find these pages useful. Vern Weitzman CTO Itrezzo, Inc.

Contents: BlackBerry Wireless Contact Synchronization BlackBerry Service Pack BlackBerry handheld BES 4.0 BlackBerry Handheld Service Book Issues BlackBerry Contacts BlackBerry Address Book Intellisync PIM Settings BlackBerry Contact Synchronization I have found that the BlackBerry OTA contact synchronization is incredibly fast, efficient and reliable. If you are on the latest handheld and BES versions with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) is configured correctly, it is unlikely that you will see contact synchronization problems. If you have found this page from a search engine, you may have hit an obscure roadblock and be struggling with OTA contact synchronization. This document may give you some fresh ideas. Here is my top ten list of things to check when there are contact synchronization issues: 1) Make sure that BES is on the latest service pack and the latest hot fix. There are way too many versions of Microsoft Exchange, MAPI and CDO DLLs. Many times the latest releases will address OTA synchronization issues. 2) Make sure that the BlackBerry handheld you are troubleshooting is using the latest version of handheld software that your carrier offers you. It can be time consuming to upgrade a handheld but it is usually well worth the effort. Sometimes the data in the handheld address book can get corrupted. If possible, dont restore the handheld data after you upgrade. WARNING: You should only do this if the users Outlook Contacts on the server has the most up to date information. You dont want loose user data that is not backed up. It may be practical to perform a hardwire synchronization first. You can use the Desktop Manager to do this. 3) Logon on to your BES and Use the BlackBerry Manager to check the BES properties for the user. In BES 4.0, select the PIM Sync property sheet.

Check these settings: Make sure that Wireless Synchronization enabled for this user is checked. Make sure that Bidirectional Synchronization is also selected. The settings are both defaults but occasionally someone will forget that they flipped these settings off. If you are running BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1, these settings are located in a different place. Double click on the specific user from the Users property sheet.

Now choose the PIM sync bullet item and scroll the contents windows to the bottom to see the address book synchronization. 4) It is possible that there could be a handheld service book issue. Logon on to your BES and Use the BlackBerry Manager to select the specific user. After the entry is highlighted, right click and choose IT Admin. A cascading menu will open and you can choose Resend Service Books. This can take several minutes so be patient before you retest BlackBerry OTA contact synchronization. Sometimes I go so far as to delete the existing service book on the handheld (use the wrench icon and choose the Service Book menu item ) . Usually the service book would look something like this: Desktop [SYNC]. Simply click the wheel and choose delete. If you delete it and afterwards send the service book, once that item reappears, you will get verification that the command worked. 5) Open the users mailbox with Outlook and jot down the total number of items in the main contacts folder. There is usually a status bar at the bottom left corner that will tell you the count. Next, change the Outlook navigation bar to use a full folder view and check for sub folders beneath the contacts. Jot down the count for each of those contact folders and summarize. What is my point behind this? I have seen users that had made redundant copies of their contacts, sometimes from other PDAs, or a previous job. This wouldnt normally be a problem, but one of those sub folders had 15,000 contacts in them. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server will by default sync all contacts in all subfolders so I had one user that essentially had 28,000 contacts. We archived those other contact sub folders to a PST. When the users total Outlook contact count in their mailbox was at a mere 4500, we were able to get things working. If you have itrezzoAgent EPS installed, you can select the User Statistics container under EPS. Select for the user in question. The Contact Tally column will give you the contact count in the main contact folder as well as the itrezzo MCL subfolder. 6) The BlackBerry Address Book on the handheld has a setting that allows you to enable or disable OTA contact synchronization. I have seen many situations where this gets accidentally turned off. If it is turned off, be sure to check the Intellisync settings in the Desktop Manager. You will need to connect/cradle the BlackBerry to do this. See the next bullet point Intellisync PIM settings. To turn on BlackBerry Address Book wireless sync, scroll to that option and hit the space bar. Click the wheel and choose save. 7) Intellisync PIM settings can also be set improperly. In the PIM Configuration, this is what you would normally see:

Note that the Address Book conduit is NOT checked. The only item checked should be Calendar. It would be more intuitive if RIM had made a BlackBerry Wireless Sync option for Address Book, Memo Pad and Task, but they did not and it is imperative that you keep those three check boxes cleared (Usually, it wont let you check them when things are working properly.) 8) Lets assume that you have checked out all of the diagnostic items mentioned so far. BES may think that everything is synchronized already so it may only synch future additions or modifications. The most powerful tool I use to fix BlackBerry wireless contact synch issues is the Desktop Manager Backup / Restore feature.

A) With the handheld unplugged, launch the BlackBerry Desktop Manager. B) Click on the Backup / Restore icon

C) Select the Advanced button D) Now connect the USB cable. E) F) You will see a list of databases appear in the right hand window Note that the Address book entry would normally be grayed. You can select it, but you can not perform any actions on it.

G) Pickup the BlackBerry handheld and select the address book icon. Click the wheel and choose Options. It may be that you will need to momentarily unplug the device to set this option. H) Next, turn off Wireless Synchronization by selecting that entry and hitting the space bar. Than click the wheel and choose Save. I) If you unplugged the USB cable in step G above, reconnect the BlackBerry handheld again. Select the Address Book database.

J)

K) The Clear button should now be enabled. Clear the address book. L) Unplug the device

M) Re-enable BlackBerry Wireless Synchronization from the Address Book Options screen N) Within a few minutes, address book synchronization should begin. Items number 9 and 10 are work in progress 9) If you are still not getting anywhere, we need to research global issues that may be affecting many users on the BES. This could be permissions, network or OS related. Take a look at my permissions article (to be written soon) to see what else addresses this. 10) Log File Analysis would usually be done by RIM but I have sometimes found very obvious errors in the log. When all else fails, we need to review the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) Logs. The logs are located by default in this directory structure: C:\Program Files\Research in Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Logs Beneath that folder is another subfolder for each day. Locate todays folder and open it. Open the log file with SYNC in the filename. For example SJ2-BES2_SYNC_01_20060328_0001.txt In Wireless Contact Diagnostic item number 8, after I re-enabled my OTA address book synchronization, the following events appeared in the log example (items [40000] (03/28 22:20:49):{0xB64} [BIPP] Received datagram, Tag=7532408

[46042] (03/28 22:20:49):{0x9C0} [SYNC-DSession] Received 1559 bytes from device. [Vernon L. Weitzman:82, SID=1151930168, SEQ=1/1] [46052] (03/28 22:20:49):{0x9C0} [SYNC-DSession] Contain 0 record(s) and 2 command(s) from Exchange.Address Book [Vernon L. Weitzman:82] [46047] (03/28 22:20:49):{0x9C0} [SYNC-DSession] Received "Initialize" for Exchange's Address Book. [Vernon L. Weitzman:82, SID=1151930168, CLID=673, ECLID=213, PR=9, ST=2W, CF=ServerWins, SF=1] [46031] (03/28 22:20:49):{0x9C0} [SYNC-DSession] Submit XML request to Exchange connector. [Vernon L. Weitzman:82] [46059] (03/28 22:20:56):{0x9CC} [SYNC-DSession] Start processing initialize XML request for Exchange's Address Book. [Vernon L. Weitzman:82] [46108] (03/28 22:20:57):{0x9CC} [SYNC-DSession] Finish processing initialize XML request for Exchange's Address Book. [Vernon L. Weitzman:82, RN=810]