Optimizing Google BB Integration
Hi, everyone, I am new to the BlackBerry world. I had to get a BlackBerry for a new job, and wound up grabbing a Storm. I really like the device and the lifestyle so far, but I had a few frustrations in setting it all up. See, my company uses Gmail for domains as our primary e-mail service, and in addition I have a separate corporate Gmail account at a different domain plus my personal Gmail for domains account. All three have calendars as well. Finally, we're not in a BES environment. It took quite a while to optimize and get everything working the way I wanted, so I figured I'd share my experiences.
Gmail for domains integration
Setup should be basically the same as getting any gmail account working. Here are the steps:
- Set your Gmail for domains account to use IMAP (click settings, POP and IMAP, disable POP, enable IMAP)
- In BIS, click "setup account", then enter your e-mail address and leave password BLANK.
- Click "I will provide the settings for this account" and click next
- Check "this is my personal account" and click next, then "I will provide the settings for this account"
- Username is your domain e-mail ([email protected]), password is your password, and e-mail server is imap.gmail.com
- Click next and in a few minutes the account should be set up.
- Now you'll want to click the "Filters" icon next to your e-mail address(es) and add a filter to stop sent messages from bouncing back to you
- Filter name: 'sent' or whatever you want. Apply filter when: 'from' field. Contains: your e-mail address. Keep "do not forward messages to device" checked.
- Lastly, go back to the list of e-mail addresses and click "edit" to set up your 'from' display name as well as the signature for mobile messages (personally I don't like closing all my messages with a Verizon ad).
I went through the identical steps and my three domain e-mail addresses were living beautifully in separate boxes on my Storm in no time. Set up properly as IMAP, e-mail read on the BlackBerry should sync as unread no problem - but it looks like marking as read in Gmail or a standalone client will NOT sync back down to the device. Bummer, but better than nothing!
Google calendar integration
Mail was easy, but getting calendars set up properly gave me a major headache and involved lots of trial and error. Some of the questions, like how to remove a "calendar" from the BlackBerry, took forever and a lot of digging. Here's what I went through.
- Download Google Sync (hit Google from your phone browser).
- When you login with your primary google account (in my case, one of my Gmail for domains addresses), it will automatically grab your "default" calendar.
- If you have multiple calendars in your Google account, you can display these as well by going to Options within the Sync app, scroll all the way down, and select the name of the primary calendar under "Sync these calendars"
- You'll see a list of all the calendars available to sync, and you can check all the ones you need.
- Make sure you change "Add new handheld events to..." to the calendar you want to publish your events to. All new events you create on the 'Berry will show up on that particular calendar.
- Sync will happen automatically every so often, but you can always launch the Sync app from the calendar (BB key, Google sync at the top) and do "sync now" from the BB menu
Now, here are the caveats and the fixes, workarounds, or the 'tough luck' situations.
- Google Sync will only attach to one account at a time
- I thought about this for a while, and ultimately the solution was to share my various calendars with one particular account.
- In the calendar you want to share, go to settings/sharing, and put the e-mail address of the account you want to send the calendar to. Set the options to full read/write access.
- Verify all the calendars you want are in the "primary" Google account.
- See above calendar instructions for more tips on managing multiple calendars on the BlackBerry.
- Multiple Google calendars show up as the same color on the BB calendar
- It sucks, but the only response to forum post I found about this as a question was "no." So I guess there's no way to change this.
- BlackBerry calendar shows a separate "calendar" for each associated e-mail account
- This was the thing that drove me crazy. I finally got all my Google calendars syncing through the one account (see "Google Sync only attaches to one account at a time), but I still had multiple "calendars" in BB Calendar
- Verify this in calendar app by BB key, 'select calendars'. You'll see one for every e-mail account on your BlackBerry.
- After an insane search, I found you can eliminate calendars you don't want by going into the device's main Options screen.
- Go to "Advanced Options"
- Go to "Service Book." Note: Some OSs may have this listed under "Applications"
- You'll see a bunch of stuff, but you're looking for your e-mail addresses followed by [CICAL]. (ex: [email protected] [CICAL])
- For each of the calendars you DO NOT WANT, highlight the line, hit BB key, and hit delete.
- It goes without saying, but before you do anything like this you'll want to backup your stuff.
That's about it - after a decent amount of time messing with this stuff, I feel like my Google/Blackberry integration is pretty solid. Coupled with Thunderbird for e-mail with the Lightning plugin for calendar, it makes a pretty great setup without having to use Outlook. Huge bonus for this, of course, is that it's completely cross-platform, so I can be on my PC at work or my Mac at home and have the same level of interaction with my e-mail and calendars. I can also be somewhere remote and manage the calendars/e-mail from the web apps - but why would I, since I can do it all on the Crackberry?