I am evaluating the BlackBerry 8800 (with Cingular) to see if it can meet my mobile telecom needs. The key requirement is that I need to be able to access two separate corporate email and calendar systems. I work as a consultant with a major consulting firm, so I have my corporate email (MS Exchange which has BB access), and I also have an email account with the client I am working for as I am there fulltime, and I would also need to access their MS Exchange Server (which is also set up for BB access).
From my research, it seems the 8800 can handle the multiple corporate email accounts with no issues, but I haven't been able to find out if it can handle the two separate calendars. Does anyone know about this?
Are both companies running BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server)? Or is one BES, and the other would be acessing off BIS? Or both BIS?
As far as the calendar, no way I know of to have two separate calendars. It may be possible to download a 3rd part app to use for one calendar, and then use the standard BB calendar for the other. I have not ever tried, so I can't confirm if this would work or not.
I am not sure if either organization runs BES, but given their sizes (both Fortune 500 corporation), I think it is safe to assume they have BES. I would think they wouldn't go with BIS. I've sent out emails to the respective MIS groups, and when I get more details, I'll reply with them to this thread.
Okay, so I've ordered the 8800 and have gotten approval for both corporate BES accounts. I'll let you guys know how it goes in trying to connect to both and get the calendaring working.
Okay, so I've ordered the 8800 and have gotten approval for both corporate BES accounts. I'll let you guys know how it goes in trying to connect to both and get the calendaring working.
I did get confirmation. You can't have one BB actiavted on two different BES at the same time.
Are there any workaround? On my old phone (HTC S620), I was able to get both emails working by having this "Push" app from Cingular called Xpress Mail. It was basically a client that I installed on a machine at work was able to log into the Exchange Server and then my phone would sync via this software. Does BB have something similar?
There is a re-director, but that means one PC would have to be left running with Outlook open all the time. Not sure if that is possible for you.
Now if having the email instantly isn't a big deal, and you can stand to wait about 15 minutes for it, then you could see if one of the Companies has Outlook Web Access and you could setup BIS to access that.
I think I can live with the redirector option as there is a machine I leave at the office with Outlook running at all time, it is how I did email with the HTC S620. The key thing is that the "from" email address match the one I would have normally sent from Outlook on that machine.
Hope it all works for you. Once you get your 8800 and get it up and running, check back in with us and let us know how things are working and what you ended up doing.
One thing you will need to remember is that with the redirector, you can't open attachments like you can with BES. For some people that's important and for others it's not. But it is something you need to know.
Thanks for that info Audit. I've never used redirector and didn't know that. So if attachments are important, then possibly using OWA on BIS would be a better option.
I do access one of my accounts using OWA from my laptop. So I can configure the BB to access my email this way and it will work okay? How about the calendar?
So I can configure the BB to access my email this way and it will work okay?
Yes, but you won't have Push Email, and you only have one way sync. However, you will get your email.
How about the calendar?
I'm guessing you'll be able to wirelessly sync via the BES, but then you'll have to manually connect to Outlook on the BIS account and sync that way via Desktop Manager. I think Navilyn has a thread about that on here, and how he did it.
So I am finally up and running with my BB 8800. It took some trial and error to get here, but I got 90% of the functionality I wanted. I was able to both send and receive email from both of my accounts. One was registered with BES and the other with BIS.
However, I was only able to get calendar functionality from the BES account. The BIS account doesn't pick up the calendar entries. So at this point, I've created an Outlook rule to forward all meeting invites to my BES account.
