Work Contacts not showing up in phone or text app. Has Anything Changed?

When we set up our BES environment for Android For Work devices we had a problem where work contacts would not be used on the phone for the phone or text application. This was a pretty big deal as our old BES environment (for BES 7 devices) always used your work contacts for those apps.

We determined that we had to basically manually import our work address book into google contacts in order to get those contacts to show up in the phone app or testing app.

Has anything changed with either newer policy rules or newer BES versions? This was one of the few totally annoying problems we had with our BES environment.

----- update -----

I just tried a few things with my New KEYone that is activated on our BES and it seems like everything is working the way it should. I added a few contacts on the work side and then called and texted the phone and the proper names showed up. That WASN'T happening when I had my Samsung S6 Active activated (same activation profile). I'll have to do a little poking around and see if something changed. With the S6 Active the only way to get the users name to appear on calls and texts was to add the contact to google contacts.


Thanks,

Roveer

In my testing this seems to be message/phone app related.
For example. the Google Messages app properly shows my work contact info for text messages, but if I switch to a 3rd party texting app such as textra or yaata, all I see are phone numbers.

I just realized my AT&T Visual Voicemail app doesn't display names unless they are in the google contacts. If I put them in the google contacts then they show up as duplicates in the contacts app. I can't win. All of my previous BB's had this capability and now that BB has gone to android they have busted stuff and won't take responsibility for it. Their answer is "most carriers don't even have VVM" and "that's a 3rd party app.

I don't care what the details are, I've had it for the last 10 years, now I don't. Totally frustrating.

So here's what I found.

None of the android apps were using the work contacts properly.

Phone app: showing names in call log, and you can search for names but not giving a scrollable list of users like it should.

Text App: You can search for names but you don't get a scrollable list like you should get

VVM App: Names not showing up, only phone numbers

So that's totally annoying. All 3 apps are broken when using BES. I spent 4 hours figuring out how to fix it. It's kinda cludgy but it does work.

Go into contacts apps and under the "settings" "general settings" is a copy option. It allows you to copy your work contacts from BES to LOCAL.

Once you do that, all the android apps will start working. Phone app will have a scrollable list of users, text app will have the same and VVM will display names in addition to numbers.

BUT...

When you go into your contacts app, all the contacts will be duplicated. You have to "Join" them together. Under the 3 dots on the right side of the contacts app you'll see an option called "duplicates". It will allow you to join each contact to eliminate seeing it twice in the contacts list.

This basically restores full functionality of apps but is basically a manual process.

Warning: Be careful, once the contacts are joined if you delete the local contact you'll delete the BES contact and as a result it will be removed from exchange, assuming that's what your using.

I could live without the app functionality as I could initiate phone calls, texts and emails from the contacts app but it was the VVM app that I really couldn't live without. Having a bunch of phone numbers instead of names is maddening.

Roveer

Originally Posted by Roveer

So here's what I found.

None of the android apps were using the work contacts properly.

<snip>

So that's totally annoying. All 3 apps are broken when using BES. I spent 4 hours figuring out how to fix it. It's kinda cludgy but it does work.

Question: Do we know for sure that this is actually a BES/UEM problem, or is it an AFW or Android O/S problem? In our UEM environment we have the Android policy setting Allow searching work contacts from personal apps setting enabled, but we're experiencing the same symptoms with our Android devices, on both Marshmallow and Nougat. I can confirm that copying contacts locally works for us too, but I'm wondering if this is an issue that should be raised with BlackBerry, or if it's a common problem with any MDM and AFW?

Originally Posted by nlindq

Question: Do we know for sure that this is actually a BES/UEM problem, or is it an AFW or Android O/S problem? In our UEM environment we have the Android policy setting Allow searching work contacts from personal apps setting enabled, but we're experiencing the same symptoms with our Android devices, on both Marshmallow and Nougat. I can confirm that copying contacts locally works for us too, but I'm wondering if this is an issue that should be raised with BlackBerry, or if it's a common problem with any MDM and AFW?

I tried to address this with BB Support. They basically blame it all on Android and say things like, we don't have visual voicemail from our provider so we don't know what you are talking about. Really passing the buck.

The phone text and VVM apps are android based apps. There's nothing that BB can do to modify them. I assume they consume whatever local or google contacts are present so to some extent BB is correct. That being said. They took a platform (BB10) that works perfectly VVM and all and moved it to android where suddenly a lot of things break and then say there's nothing they can do about it. That's pretty **** poor if you ask me.

They werent even able to provide any guidance on figuring out the problem. I was able, through trial and error to get what appears to be a workable solution albeit a very manual process. Not what I call quality software if you ask me. BB (a software company) has really fallen down on this one.

With some more playing around I have found that my method is not perfect. While it restores the scrolling lists of users to the android apps, when you are in contacts or in a new email and use the + symbol you will get the scrolling list, but if you attempt to search and start typing every listing shows up as a duplicate.

Aggravating.

As i mentioned, for me work contacts seem fine in the standard google messages app, but not others. This is both on PRIV android 6.0.1 and Samsung android 7.0
Havent tested much with phone apps as I honestly dont get a lot of calls, all messages.

UEM 12.6.3, afw user privacy, IT policy has enabled afw personal apps can search work contacts. I'd have to double check exact setting name