Address Book Push included in Wireless Activation?

[theponz]

Hello all,
I have been working for a company that uses BES on a WIN2K OS and BES 4.1.5.26 Platform. I am going to upgrade to 5.0 monday and I have a question.

We have roughly 250 HH's on our BES and 150 of them are field users who are setup a bit differently.

Our field users config for Exchange is setup as POP3 so they dont have calendars contacts tasks or notes sitting on our server at Corporate.
Not really an issue unless the end user goes to Sync their device to their laptop's outlook. Then 9 out of 10 times the users will have to have the Service Books sent back down, or re-enterprise activated. RIM says this is because the service books get corupt.

My question: Is their a way that I could push the entire global address list as a default contact list rather than having the end user lookup each user?

[GlenB]

The only way to do this would be to export the GAL, import it into everyone's contacts and have them sync that.

I am a little confused about your description of your environment, if you are using BES 4.1 then why would any of your users be configured for POP3?

[theponz]

We still have users in the field who utilize POP3 mainly because of the rural areas they are working in. The EU's are constantly on the move and dont have a solid one workstation to use at a specific center. They utilize their laptops and the broadband connections available at every location in their regions.

Several of our centers are utilizing a 1MB dl broadband connection while others have a much higher speed. Its this infrequent connections that caused my company to keep using the POP3 rather than a direct connection to the Exchange Server.

Hope that helps, I appreciate your response to my question.

[GlenB]

Thanks for clarifying that theponz. How do users who have POP3 access from their laptops currently access the GAL? And just how large is the GAL. If you send them updates (via csv?) for them to import into Outlook then can these users be configured to do a wired sync with Outlook?

[theponz]

The GAL is filled with roughly 3500 people. The problem I am facing when doing a wired sync is that 9 times out of 10 when they do the wired sync it messes up the services books and I either have to push them back down to the user or I have to re EA them all together.

The EU's currently dont pull down the entire GAL, rather that do a simple lookup from the contacts on the HH and save the contact they need that way.
Seems to be the easiest way, but a very long process for the EU.

I know it sounds like I am being difficult but it would really help if I knew why the wired sync is messing up the service books. if it didnt I could just tell the EU to save the contacts on their laptop and we would be fine.

....slightly

[theponz]

For some reason we have users who will have to be re-EA'd if they cable sync their device to their laptops.

Does anyone have any information that could help?