Blackberry Over-The-Air/Wireless Synchronization and v11

[SCAI]

Hi!

Please excuse me for coming up with this again, if it is discussed elsewhere but I just searched for active topics on this and did not find any.

Could somebody give me an overview of the options that exists in both the commercial and open source versions of Scalix to enable wireless over the air (OTA) synchronization to Blackberry devices?

I know that there is something from Funambol and NotifyLink but - please apologize my stupidity - I do not get the way they work. They appear both to do a lot more than synching to Blackberry. They both produce funny graphics on what they can connect to but I just want a simple explanation how they do OTA between Scalix and Blackberry. I have not found that simple graphic at their sites.

Also NotifyLink seems to be priced in some way but I did not find a ressource telling me how much it costs and what Scalix version I need.

So it would be nice if somebody could tell me for each OTA connection option between Scalix and Blackberry:
a) Where can I get it?
b) What does it cost?
c) Which Scalix version do I need?
d) When will it be available?
e) Is it stable?
f) Does it use the Blackberry Enterprise Server or does it use some other way?
g) Where can I find ressources telling me how it exactly works?

The wiki at http://www.scalix.com/wiki/index.php?title=HowTos/Funambol seems to be pretty outdated, so answers to this post could go there and would add to it.

Many thanks in advance!

Regards,
Andre

[SCAI]

Forgot something:
h) Which parts does it sync?
i) eMail
ii) Calender
iii) Contacts
iv) Tasks
v) Notes
vi) Public Folders

[kopeah]

Hi,

Notifylink only works with the commercial version and from what I understand, their pricing included blackberry server price.

[jjjheimer]

Interested too - subscribed

[hydrospace]

Hi there,

most of the informations you are looking for you can find at: http://www.notifylink.com/imap4_solutio ... /index.htm

There you can see that there will be no blackberry server included... The work is done by the notify link enterprise server as a man in the middle. At the moment this will be a windows 2k3 server but afaik notify is working since a while on a linux based version using scalix api insted of ol cdo...

By the way in germany there is a partner evaluating at the moment the possibility of a hosted version of notify which will be very i nteresting for companies with only the ceo using bb and other mobile devices.....

Stefan

[kanderson]

Notify currently does not work with Scalix 11. Expect that to be resolved shortly, but as of today, they only support Scalix 10.

Notify work via IMAP. The Notify server, (Requires Windows/MS SQL (msde will work fine)) connects to the scalix server periodically to check for new content. If found, it is pulled to the Notify box. Similarly, the handheld connects to the Notify server, and is fed any newly arrived content. Notify works well, and syncs Inbox, Contacts and Calendar. It does NOT sync sent Items, and I've seen a few complaints because of that.

The new Blackberry webclient will allow you to do over the air sync in a similar way, but ill not sync anything except the inbox. You'd still have cradle sync for everything else though. I will note, that Outlook 2003 seems to create messages in XML, rather than HTML, and if you embed an image in the message (including the signature), the blackberry will not display a message body.

Because Scalix allows me to add/replace/change things in the background, I've simply assigned the BLackberry an email address of it's own, and I forward email to it, rather than using the IMAP sync tools for it. This allows me to send all outbound messages through a milter on the Scalix side, that strips out all NON-Plain Text content, for messages going to *blackberry.net which assures me that the message arrives problem free. The additional content would be dropped anyway, so it's useless to the handheld, so I'm not losing anything here. I'm only assuring that the XML/HTML issue never arises. Again, this means cradle sync for PIM data, but it works well, and generally, cradle sync meets 80% of people's needs.

I've never worked with Funambol.

Kev.

[SCAI]

Hmm, so NotifyLink does not integrate into the BES and it does not currently work with Scalix 11.

Thanks for your info on cradle sync but I would like to keep this topic free of any cradle sync related comments, because this is exactly the opposite of over-the-air sync. I know it's always an option but so is getting back to pen and paper.

What I want is having a solution enabling me to use the BES for centralized software distribution and some other means to get full PIM synching.

Is this somewhere out there?

What does it cost and where can I get it?

TIA,
Andre

[kanderson]

If you need BES, then you need Exchange, or Notes. Period.

Notifylink is a BlackBerry recommended partner, and will likely be the solution recommended for all other mail systems. Actually, I even have an Exchange user looking at Notify. In part because it allows them to switch out their mail server, but because they aren't on a current version of Exchange BES doesn't support them either.

Just to clarify, Notify REPLACES BES. It does approximately the same thing, but without the handheld or mailserver limits that BES has.

Kev.

[mephisto]

Our experience with scalix 10 and notify is that the platform itself is not as well designed as it could be (e.g. in regards to stability). I'm not saying it is completely unstable, although it was at our installation, but that was mostly due to it being installed on an unsupported platform. Furthermore, blackberry devices are the worst option to go with Notify. This is mostly because they are not designed for third party mail and pim sync, so the notifylink interface is crude and not well integrated. This will not satisfy any blackberry user that has worked with the perfectly integrated solution BES+BB. There is for example NO push mail. Notify uses scheduled pull. LED blinking for new mails won't work either. Unless RIM opens BES for other mail servers, you will never get perfect results with this.
Our new service provider recommends WM5 smartphones for notify, because the notify client is more integrated into the device's software which offers a better look and feel.
One further note: Notify's internationalization support is a joke. The client is only available in English and high ascii characters can create problems with attachments and signatures. Furthermore they only officially support their software on devices and servers with an English OS.
If I had the option to move to another wireless solution (preferrably BES), I would do so in a heartbeat, but frankly there is none yet.

[florian]

First of all, even though it is not officially certified and tested, NotifyLink 4.1 *works* fine with Scalix 11. We've been using it for over 6 months now internally. Our CEO, who's a heavy-duty Blackberry user, actually likes it quite a bit.

When using the Blackberry, NotifyLink is one option.

If you only require eMail and no Calendar/Contact sync (which is the case for me), you can also use Blackberry's Internet Mail Service and the Scalix IMAP server. This is what I'm currently using and it works fine for me.

We're investigating into other ways of supporting Mobile Devices going forward, including such based on Open Standards.

Stay tuned,
Florian.

[kanderson]

The ultimate solution would be to just support BES. I don't know what's required, I'm sure it's a TON of work, but that would get my vote (I actually spoke to Jim about it earlier today).

The biggest advantage I see is that then the handhelds go away as a problem, because BES will deal with them as they become popular.

From a client perspective, BES is usually free when you order 5 or more handhelds, so Notify is more expensive by far, and it's not nearly as nice of a solution, particularly for Blackberrys.

On a positive note, Notify's support is wicked. They're patient, friendly, and knowledgeable.

Kev.

[florian]

What I also like about Notify's product concept is their Clients of Choice philosophiy that matches with Scalix's on the desktop. They are unique in a way that they can support multiple different device types from a single server and that's a huge one for heterogenous user communities.

You're quite right, for Blackberry-only environments, there is probably nothing like the BES - which is somewhat logical given that they own the full stack. In some sense, they are the Apple user experience of the mobile email world, like it or not.

I think this year will be really challenging and interesting for everybody in mobile wirelss email, including ourselves. I think there is some good things to come, so stay tuned.....

-- Florian.

[kanderson]

My Nokia e62 came from the factory with Blackberry support installed. BES supports Treo now, and they support blackberries, obviously. The only thing missing is the MS mobile/pocket/whatever. I really don't have any experience with them, so I don't know *FOR SURE* if there's a BES client or not, but I would bet that there is. So what else is there?

KEv.

[florian]

WinMob devices don't come with the Blackberry client - this is where ActiveSync comes in - another thing that we're looking at.....

Wonderful world of Wireless. This week 3GSM in Barcelona is on - wonder what they'll be coming back with from that one!

Florian.

[mephisto]

The ultimate solution would be to just support BES. I don't know what's required, I'm sure it's a TON of work, but that would get my vote (I actually spoke to Jim about it earlier today).

This would require RIM to either program a Scalix interface (highly unlikeley), opening their specs for Scalix to do the work (also unlikely) or publishing a BES with open standard interfaces (e.g. XML). The latter is the most realistic scenario of the three, although still quite unlikely. Let's hope for some fierce competition in the market to make them change their mind accordingly. I guess that everybody would jump on the bandwagon to program an according interface for their own groupware solution, but this would probably harm RIM's product image as being rock stable.