Last week I attended the Blackberry training course for the recently released Blackberry Enterprise Server 5.0 in London.

It consisted of two courses, BlackBerry Enterprise Server Software version 5.0 - Essential and BlackBerry Enterprise Server Software version 5.0 - Comprehensive, which were both two days in length.

PDF's of the full syllabus are here: http://uk.blackberry.com/support/programs/bas_5%200_essential_syllabus.pdf & http://uk.blackberry.com/support/programs/bas_5%200_comprehensive_syllabus.pdf

The training location was at Stayahead Training’s site, near the Barbican, in London. No other training sites, in the UK, were available.

The courses mainly covered installing version 5 from scratch, upgrading from a version 4.1.6 BES, using the Blackberry Administration Service, setting up High Availability and the Blackberry Monitoring server.

One of the few unfortunate things about this training course is that there is only an Exchange version currently available, of the course, unlike the BES 4.1.6 version which has a Domino specific course.

Another problem was that some of the labs did not seem to work but I am sure this was more down to the fact that the facilities were not owned by RIM and could not be configured to allow the VM images direct access to the SRP servers.

Overall I thought the training was very useful and I would recommend it if you intend to upgrade your BES, to version 5, or install a BES for the first time.

 

I have had problems when searching a database which has been web enabled. The results that are produced from a query do not match the results from the same query ran from the Notes Client 8 search bar. If the same search is carried out on a Notes Client 6 then it does return the same results as the web search. This is a problem when the searching is not consistent across the interfaces to the same database and data.

This is due to improvements in searching in the version 8 Notes client to make the searching more like the way search engines of the Internet work (from the users point of view).

 

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
function validateForm()
{
if (document.Searchform.Query.value==0){
   alert("You must enter a keyword before searching.");
   document.Searchform.Query.focus();
   return false;
   }
var string = "";
var querystring = document.Searchform.Query.value;
if (querystring.indexOf('\"') == -1) {
if (querystring.indexOf(' ') != -1) {
  string = querystring.split(' ');
  var newstring = string[0];
  for (i=1;i<string.length; i++)
    newstring += " AND " + string[i];
  document.Searchform.Query.value = newstring;
}
}
}
// -->
</script>

 

<FORM name="Searchform" method="GET" action=" +  + "><input type="hidden" name="SearchView" value="<Computed Value>"><input type="hidden" name="SearchOrder" value="1"><input type="hidden" name="SearchWV" value="TRUE"><input type="hidden" name="SearchMax" value="0"><input type="Text" name="Query" Size="25"><input type=Submit value="Search" class="searchbutton" onClick="return validateForm(this);"></FORM>

 

The above javascript, that I have written, will modify the query string on submit to add an AND condition between each of the search terms. This gives the same results as the Notes v8 client searching.

 

Update: I will test the searching on Xpages to see whether that is also consistent or not.

With the release last month of v5 of the Blackberry Enterprise Server I have looked at what advantages upgrading, to the new version, would give over the current version of BES.

 

Below is a summary of the new features based of the comparison charts on the Blackberry website.

 

1. Device Side Folder Management
2. Flag for Followup
3. Calendar Attachment Support
4. Synchronization of Public and Private contacts
5. Synchronization of Multiple Contact Folders
6. Calendar Meeting Delegation
7. Support for Audio WMA files
8. Support for Open Document Format (ODF)
9. Remote File Explorer
10. Web-Based Blackberry Administration Service Console
11. Custom Roles with different levels of access according to employee’s roles and permissions
12. Built in Monitoring with Threshold Analysis Tool  and Maintenance Window Support
13. Job Management for Applications
14. Throttling
15. Schedules Upgrades
16. Blackberry Enterprise Transporter
17. High Availability
18. Enhanced Enterprise Activation Diagnostics/Troubleshooting

 

The High Availability feature, allowing a backup BES server to automatically take over when the primary is unavailable, alone makes the upgrade worth while. Also the web-based admin console should be an be an improvement over requiring the Blackberry Administrators to each install the Blackberry Manager software locally.

 

From the users point of view there will not be any real changes until v5 of the handset OS is released.

 

Problem

 

Mailto links do not work when selected. Error message “Make sure path or Internet address is correct” is displayed.

 

Cause

 

The email is a MIME message and is displayed using Internet Explorer. You can see when the Notes Client is using Internet Explorer to render an object by the change in the top menus. An Applet item is added (see below).

 

This only seems to affect clients (6.5,8,8.5 tested) that also have Internet Explorer 8 installed. Possibly due to additional MIME type setup to be displayed, by Internet Explorer 8, when it is installed.

 

Solution

 

Disable the rendering of inline MIME in the Notes Client Advanced Basic Options. Untick “Disable embedded browser for MIME mail”.

 

 

Update: This also fixes the problem, in 8.5 clients, when the double right click to close does not work.

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