myITdepartment

Yes, it's true. GroupWise 8 and Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1.6, along with BB OS 4.5 are pretty addictive!

- Brief Integration Overview, November 4th, 2008 - AFG

In order to use email integration on a Blackberry and a GroupWise system, you can use the following methods:

1. Webmail (webaccess) - This works well if the versions are stated above. The bigger trick is to enable both your webaccess gateway and the application on Tomcat with a much longer timeout, so refreshing is easy without logging back in again.

2. POP3 or IMAP- Again this works well if the versions are stated aboved. Not at all effective since there is more maintenance on the Blackberry, and your sent items don't share the same smarts in relation to their storage space.The email is not as fast as a BES integration.

3. BES (Blackberry Enterprise server) - This is the most sensible approach. It also allows you to run the Enterprise Messenger Service for GroupWise on the handheld. Your carrier needs to be sure BES (not BIS) is enabled on the account for your device.We typically see the email show up on the handheld 30-40 seconds after it is sent to the GroupWise account, which is nice. Our carrier usually takes 5-10 minutes for POP/IMAP.

Realize that GroupWise 8 does not ship until November 17th 2008. We upgraded our production system with the GroupWise 8 BETA 5 and liked it so much, we decided to keep it. After that, we wanted to see if BES would integrate without issues. YES IT DID.We used the SOAP connecor and the GroupWise 8 client. We did not have any of the issues 6.5 or 7.0 users had with some GroupWise dll's not having the correct function in order to get the system address book connected the the BES Manager.

So while this is seemingly a little more than "experimental", we like to think it's a bit ahead of the "curve", in a manner of speaking.

What we used in this production environment:

VMARE SERVER HOST (Linux)

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with OES2 Addon install (Linux) for Groupwise 8 Server.

Windows 2003 Server (Sorry, RIM does not support Windows 2008 Server yet, and too many beta's had crept into this environment already) with BES 4.1 SP6 for GroupWise from RIM.

BlackBerry 8830 World Edition with OS 4.5 (also BETA and not supported by the carrier).

The combination of BES 4.1SP6 and BB OS 4.5 gives us HTML formatted email from our GroupWise server on the handheld. It wirelessly syncs Address Books, calendar/task/notes and email.

We also took the time to SSL enable GroupWise Messenger (required to run it on a BB handheld, or linux workstation). Then we created the application on our server so we could perform an OTA push and sent it to select handhelds in our organization so syncing to the desktop was not necessary to get this application.

We did find running ConsoleOne on Linux was not updating our GroupWise config files, and hope Novell fixes this one day soon. In the menatime, we crafted ours by hand for the DOM, POA, GWIA, WEBACCESS and the Messenger MA/AA. We also found the GWCSRGEN utility seems "half baked" on Linux, meaning you have to run a utility on the Linux system to generate the keys to SSL enable the Messenger system, but then you have to use iManager to create the b64 certificate and have to use a linux type directory/path statement in the Messenger MA/AA config files in order to get the agents to both start correctly and use the key/certificates.  Perhaps if we ran ConsoleOne on a workstation it would not have given us this issue, but still we were puzzled by the fact that the changes are reflected in the ConsoleOne GUI, but not in the actual config files. One of those things that makes you go "hmmmmm, it's taken me how long to figure this out?".

Overall, we're impressed with the relative ease of integration for these three systems, especially since two are Beta products. - END

Option 1, Webaccess/Webmail

This actually is the easiest if you have GroupWise webaccess already working and you have Blackberry Internet service. While it is not exactly an integration, it does allow the ability to view email/calendars/folders, etc. as well as compose and send new email. It's also a nice easy to use lifeline in the event something else is not working.

There is a 1-2 minute setup time involved, and this already assumes your system is webaccess capable and you can login to it from a PC from outside the office now.

Steps Involved 

1. Launch the Blackberry Browser on your device

2. Click the Blackberry Button, navigate and select OPTIONS

3. Select "Browser Configuration" and scroll to the "Emulation Mode" and choose MS POCKET IE, then save.

4. Go to your login page (i.e., http://mail.yourdomain.com/servlet/webacc), bookmarking it would be a good idea, login, and enjoy. 

We've noticed that when you use this, ALWAYS exit from within the interface, otherwise something strange happen on the BIS (Blackberry Internet Server) where it seems to cache the connection, so every time you login afterwards it says your "Login is not currrent" and you never really get anywhere. It's "user" resettable by changing the browser emulation mode to "OpenWave", saving, logging in and exiting "gracefully, then changing back to MS Pocket IE again.