Setup Palm Pre at Company with RIM/BES?

haveck · 07/17/2009, 03:39 PM

I love my Pre, but I recently changed companies and am having trouble getting the phone setup for my email.

I was able to configure Exchange manually at my old company, but at the new one they have BES and RIM. I'm apparently "setup on BES" and normally they would instruct me to just enter my email address and a company-wide default password on the Blackberry, but I'm not sure how I can do this with my Pre.

I know what my exchange server is from Outlook. I know my Outlook username and password. I'm pretty sure I know the domain (not sure if the fully qualified TLD needs to go in there, or just the domain name and not the .....com).

I'm a techincal person, but have tried a number of combinations within the exchange configuration, and started playing with IMAP, but can't seem to find the combo that would work. Company helpdesk only has support for the Blackberry RIM/BES autoconfiguration it seems, but I'm pretty sure this should be possible.

Need my emails, calendar, contacts -- or any part thereof would be better than nothing. Help!?

squeff · 07/17/2009, 04:25 PM

You can't access BES from a Pre. That's Blackberry Enterprise Server. (I know you know this, but it was worth repeating for those that may not know)

I'll bet your problem is that your Exchange server is available only within the firewall. This has been the setup everywhere I've been. If it's available outside the firewall, you absolutely need the company.com part because the Pre is just an Internet device and knows nothing of your internal network.

Do you have Outlook Web Access (usually something like webmail.company.com or owa.company.com or exchange.company.com) where you can get your e-mail via the web? If so, try using THAT as your server and see if it works. Might not, but it could. Where I used to work, this worked.

haveck · 07/17/2009, 04:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by squeff

You can't access BES from a Pre. That's Blackberry Enterprise Server. (I know you know this, but it was worth repeating for those that may not know)

I'll bet your problem is that your Exchange server is available only within the firewall. This has been the setup everywhere I've been. If it's available outside the firewall, you absolutely need the company.com part because the Pre is just an Internet device and knows nothing of your internal network.

Do you have Outlook Web Access (usually something like webmail.company.com or owa.company.com or exchange.company.com) where you can get your e-mail via the web? If so, try using THAT as your server and see if it works. Might not, but it could. Where I used to work, this worked.

Old company had OWA, new one does not. I have never owned a Blackberry phone. If I asked to look through a coworkers, would their be server information broken down in there that would help? Or is it just stuff that ties back to BES? I kind of imaged that BES might just manage the configuration to the regular exchange server, etc...

Also, other ideas?

squeff · 07/17/2009, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haveck

Old company had OWA, new one does not. I have never owned a Blackberry phone. If I asked to look through a coworkers, would their be server information broken down in there that would help? Or is it just stuff that ties back to BES? I kind of imaged that BES might just manage the configuration to the regular exchange server, etc...

Also, other ideas?

If they are using Blackberry devices on a BES server, I doubt anything they have would help you. You cannot use a Pre with a BES server, so the information would not apply.

BES does quite a bit. One of those things is to broker traffic between Blackberry devices and the Exchange server. But that information is kept within the server, not on the Blackberry.

My guess is that you're out of luck. No OWA suggests to me that they don't want people accessing e-mail/calendar/etc. outside of the corporate network. Except via Blackberry, which carries with it a whole spectrum of things that make IT security people happy.

In theory, the Pre will have some of the features in the 1.1 OS release. But that doesn't mean that your IT shop will suddenly decide to support the Pre.

Your alternative, if you're allowed to install software on your office computer (and you leave it on all of the time) is to look at third party products like CompanionLink (and others). You need to make sure this is OK with your IT department. People have been fired for installing programs like this without permission. (Depends on where you work).

stevodadevo · 07/17/2009, 05:06 PM

You just simply can not connect a Pre to BES. It's that simple. You must use the OWA address and the Exchange Administrator has to enable ActiveSync on the Exchange server. If no OWA, no ActiveSync. If no ActiveSync, no corporate email on your Pre.

Most likely, if your company has BES they aren't going to allow you to go directly to Exchange through ActiveSync.

playboy · 07/17/2009, 05:08 PM

As the two previous posters mentioned, if your company doesn't OWA, which you said that they didn't, then you won't be able to recieve your Outlook emails on your Pre.

squeff · 07/17/2009, 05:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haveck

I'm apparently "setup on BES" and normally they would instruct me to just enter my email address and a company-wide default password on the Blackberry, but I'm not sure how I can do this with my Pre.

This is curious. They've not supplied you with a Blackberry, yet they've set you up. Sounds like they just set everyone up, even if they couldn't possible use the BES server.

Where I used to work, they had to pay for each and every person the BES server, so they weren't about to just sign up people that didn't have a Blackberry.

Perhaps this suggests another route: tell you boss that since you're on the server, you want them to give you a Blackberry.

You'll need to carry two phones, but at least you'll be able to enjoy your Pre, but use the company-supplied Blackberry for work stuff.

And, if your company doesn't disallow installing software on the Blackberry, you can then install GoogleSync (or something else like GooSync/Syncje) in order to sync the Blackberry to Google. Then, you can use your Pre to sync to that.

Skribbles505 · 07/17/2009, 08:54 PM

I work at a company that uses Novell Groupwise and Blackberry's BES. Since there is no Novell client for the Pre I setup mine just using the groupwise server info using Imap/smtp. It didn't work for me until I set the security for incoming/outgoing as ssl and used authentication for both. Works fine though except no calendar sync or messenger access. For the calendar though I found a rule to forward appointments (only not tasks or other types of calendar features) to my Gmail account which I have sync'd with the Pre. To get the existing calendar data I exported the calender as a .ics file and then imported it to my Gmail calendar. Dunno if all this will help you but good luck.

haveck · 07/17/2009, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by squeff

This is curious. They've not supplied you with a Blackberry, yet they've set you up. Sounds like they just set everyone up, even if they couldn't possible use the BES server.

Where I used to work, they had to pay for each and every person the BES server, so they weren't about to just sign up people that didn't have a Blackberry.

Perhaps this suggests another route: tell you boss that since you're on the server, you want them to give you a Blackberry.

You'll need to carry two phones, but at least you'll be able to enjoy your Pre, but use the company-supplied Blackberry for work stuff.

And, if your company doesn't disallow installing software on the Blackberry, you can then install GoogleSync (or something else like GooSync/Syncje) in order to sync the Blackberry to Google. Then, you can use your Pre to sync to that.

They set me up on BES. They even know I want to use my personal phone. They have no problem with that, just don't know how I'd be able to use it without "RIM". They're willing to give me a Blackberry, but I'd rather not carry around two phones. Also, coworkers already know my personal number, so I'd planned on expensing the phone - going to be hard sell to do that if they're also issuing me a device.

The helpdesk mentioned that they knew they still could not support iPhones, and that someone needed to be updated on the server before that could happen. No indication of if/when that update was planned.

I know the exchange address, but apparently that's just not enough...? =/

haveck · 07/17/2009, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skribbles505

I work at a company that uses Novell Groupwise and Blackberry's BES. Since there is no Novell client for the Pre I setup mine just using the groupwise server info using Imap/smtp. It didn't work for me until I set the security for incoming/outgoing as ssl and used authentication for both. Works fine though except no calendar sync or messenger access. For the calendar though I found a rule to forward appointments (only not tasks or other types of calendar features) to my Gmail account which I have sync'd with the Pre. To get the existing calendar data I exported the calender as a .ics file and then imported it to my Gmail calendar. Dunno if all this will help you but good luck.

This sounds like it might help... though, we don't use groupwise I don't think. So, I'm not sure... maybe try the same approach but with the exchange address from Outlook?

Les Anderson · 07/17/2009, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haveck

They set me up on BES. They even know I want to use my personal phone. They have no problem with that, just don't know how I'd be able to use it without "RIM". They're willing to give me a Blackberry, but I'd rather not carry around two phones. Also, coworkers already know my personal number, so I'd planned on expensing the phone - going to be hard sell to do that if they're also issuing me a device.

The helpdesk mentioned that they knew they still could not support iPhones, and that someone needed to be updated on the server before that could happen. No indication of if/when that update was planned.

I know the exchange address, but apparently that's just not enough...? =/

Sounds to me like they are running a version of exchange prior to 2003sp2 - which is when push was enabled. The iPhone remarks make sense in this context. BES can still interface with older exchange servers.

The seconds the iPhones work- so will your pre.

Find out if they have the pop/smtp ports open. That would at least get you access to mail on your pre- no push/calender though.