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As a BlackBerry administrator, your responsibilities include controlling your BlackBerry environment. You can control what users can do on their devices, who can push content out to those devices, and even help your users when they lose or break their devices.

You have many means at your disposal to accomplish these goals. This chapter discusses several of the tools you can use to help manage the users in your BlackBerry environment, including the following:

* IT commands: Commands that are sent to the device wirelessly, that instruct it to perform a certain function.

* PIM settings: Control how the users’ devices synchronize with their PIM data.

* Wireless synchronization: Enable or disable the ability for the users’ devices to synchronize email and PIM data wirelessly.

* Redirector settings: Modify the user’s signatures and e-mail filters, if necessary.

* MDS access control: Control how the user can use MDS.

Throughout this chapter, we will use screenshots from the Lotus Domino BES BlackBerry Manager. If you are using an Exchange BES 4.0 BlackBerry Manager, the GUI is slightly different. However, the settings and their locations are the same.

IT Commands

By sending IT commands to the devices, you can make the devices perform a certain function. These IT commands were first introduced in the Domino BES 4.0 product, so they are not available on the Lotus Domino BES 2.2. For Exchange BES environments, the IT commands have been available since BES 3.6. In addition to the correct BES version, the device must be running at least version 3.6 of the Handheld Software.

To use this feature, begin by opening the BlackBerry Manager console. On the far left of the screen, select the desired server. At the top of the screen, select the User List tab, then click on one of the users below the tab. As shown in Figure 7-1, you can view the IT Admin tasks by clicking that heading in the lower-right portion of the screen.

Figure 7-1: IT Admin tasks in BlackBerry Manager

The list of available tasks includes the following:

* Resend IT Policy

* Assign IT Policy

* Resend Peer-to-Peer Key

* Resend Service Book

* Set Password and Lock Handset

* Set Owner Information

* Erase Data and Disable Handheld

Resend IT Policy

As discussed in Chapter 3, IT Policies are a set of parameters you can use to enforce company policy, security, or simply limit the available functions on the BlackBerry handheld device. In BES 4.0, IT Policies can also contain settings for third-party applications that may be running on your devices.

There should be no need to resend IT Policies because they are automatically sent out when they are updated, or when you assign a new one to a user or users. However, if for some reason a particular device does not receive an IT Policy, you can use this task to resend it.

Assign IT Policy

When a BlackBerry user is added to the BES, the default IT Policy is automatically sent to that user. If a user is moved between BlackBerry Enterprise Servers in the same BlackBerry domain, that user will keep using the same IT Policy. To be safe, the BES will resend the IT Policy to the device. If at some point you create a new IT Policy, you can use this task to assign it to one or many BlackBerry users.

Resend Peer-to-Peer Key

A peer-to-peer encryption key is a key that you can set to limit the sending of PIN-to-PIN messages. If you set a peer-to-peer key, then your BlackBerry users will not be able to send PIN-to-PIN messages to devices outside of their BlackBerry domain, although they will be able to receive incoming PIN messages from any device. When you set the encryption key, all PIN-to-PIN communications are encrypted with that key. This is in addition to the 3DES encryption that is applied to all BlackBerry communications. To set a peer-to-peer encryption key, click your BlackBerry domain in the left of the BlackBerry Manager screen, and then click Update Peer-To-Peer Encryption Key under the Service Control and Customization section on the right.

To resend this encryption key, use the Resend Peer-To-Peer Key command in the IT Admin section of the BlackBerry Manager console screen.

Resend Service Book

Service Books are entities that describe to the handheld how to connect to certain services. For example, the MDS Service Book (which is called IPPP) enables the handheld for MDS use and tells it how to access the service. Your cellular carrier will send Service Books to your handheld, enabling the WAP browser, and any Web mail services that you sign up for.

Service Books are always sent from the BES automatically. If at any time you need to resend the Service Books because you believe that a handheld is missing them, you can use this IT Command to do so.

Set Password and Lock Handheld

This IT command sends to the user’s device a wireless command that sets or changes the handheld password. In addition, it locks the device, which then requires that the new password be entered to unlock the unit. When sending this IT command, an option enables you to change the Owner Information screen that displays when the device is locked (see Figure 7-2).

Figure 7-2: Setting the password and locking the handheld unit

This IT command is useful when a user loses a device. As you can see in Figure 7-2, it not only allows you to secure the device, but also to display a message on the device that informs the potential Good Samaritan how to contact you to return it.

Set Owner Information

This IT command sends a wireless command to the device to change the Owner Information screen. As shown in Figure 7-3, the result of this command is very similar to the lower half of the screen shown when sending the Set Password and Lock Handheld IT command.

Figure 7-3: Setting owner information

This command is useful when a user loses a device, but the user is positive that the device is locked with a password. You can change the Owner Information screen to instruct the person who finds the device how to contact you to have it returned.

About the Authors
Craig J. Johnston (East Windsor, NJ) has over 15 years of networking experience, most recently with the BlackBerry. He has done proof of concept BlackBerry projects and has actively supported BlackBerry's since 2000 in a Lotus Domino environment.His extensive knowledge of networking, hardware and wireless technologies is coupled with writing and technical instruction. He is currently a product manager for Onset Technology, RIM's largest third party vendor.

Richard Evers (Waterloo, ON) is the editor of the BlackBerry Developer Journal. He is an expert in the areas of wireless communication and small-footprint application development. Richard has over 25 years of experience designing and developing commercial and custom applications. He has been the editor and publisher of numerous publications, including Transactor magazine. Richard creates and publishes educational web sites, and he develops customized web software including search engines, custom proxy servers and browsers.

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