Questions[blackberry](server)

Trying to allow 3 people to view and ideally sync (create/edit) common (team) calendar events via Blackberry and hosted Exchange 2007 BES. My understanding is that BES does not support anything other than a users primary calendar to be synced wirelessly.

From what I've researched the only supported workflow is for user to create event in public calendar on Outlook and then invites team members individually as optional attendees so event displays in their calendar (and on their Blackberry).

I've seen some 3rd party utilities that claim to support syncing of public folders/calendars:

• Add2Outlook: http://www.diditbetter.com/add2outlook.aspx
• WICKSoft: http://www.wicksoft.com/contacts_calendars.htm (needs to be installed on local Exchange server)

I've also been told I can sync public/other calendars using Desktop Manager, but I need to avoid any tethered sync with this environment.

Am I missing an easier workflow here? There must be tens of thousands of BES users that require the ability to/view share a public, shared or team calendar on their Blackberry. How can I solve this?

This is an odd issue that I tend to see with Blackberry devices connecting via IMAP on some of my Sendmail+Dovecot mail deployments. For users of those devices, the Dovecot indexes tend to get locked. This prevents mail flow to the Blackberry device as well as the user's Outlook client. The corresponding messages in /var/log/maillog look like:

May 2 08:13 XXX imap(asmith): Timeout while waiting for release of exclusive fcntl() lock for index file /home/asmith/mail/.imap/INBOX/.imap.index

This is repeated for every mailbox synchronization attempt...

It's a strange error and is easily resolved by removing the offending index file. However, I'm curious about the root cause of the error and locked-state and if there's something I can modify on the configuration side to prevent it.

In other situations, I've only had a handful of BB devices to deal with. In this case, 80 new Blackberries were added, and this locking has an impact on system load and performance.

Some users on my domain use a Blackberry for email. Should Blackberry's servers be included somehow in my SPF record?

Thank you much for any advice.

We are running BES 5.0, with a Salesforce Mobile application push.This works fine.

We do not want the users to download and install 3rd Party applications, so we have disable this by creating a BES policy (disable Third Party Software Downloads). But when we disable this, the application push for our SalesForce Application ceases to work.

Does anybody know/have experience with making an exception for certain applications or an exception for applications that are provided by application push from the BES?

Can someone explain very briefly the way Blackberry's email functions. I'm not looking for nuts and bolts, just answers to some very basic questions:

• Does a Blackberry check with an Exchange server directly, or does it always/ever use an intermediate server?
• If it uses an intermediate server, is that server managed by RIM, or the customer's mobile network operator?
• To configure Exchange email on a Blackberry, do you enter the settings on the phone itself, or via a web interface?
• What other email protocols can Blackberry devices use, and do they (also?) use an intermediate server?