Gathering support experience from Groupwise BES Admins here

[noname]

Hi all,

Been supporting Domino BES for years and suddenly "forced" to support Groupwise BES as well as we have new accounts in this alien platform. Have been "proactively" placed in many fast-track Groupwise courses and expected to support as though we are already experts. But a course is still a course - mostly theories and concepts. They are never close to real world experience. I guess most of us know what I meant. Behind every sensible technical talks, they are backed with the solid years of experience hands-on with the platform. Just like we built our Domino knowledge from the many years of administering it on a daily basis. I believe I can take away some from the pool of Groupwise BES experts in this forum.

Could you share your experiences in supporting Groupwise and its BES? I have the following questions:-

(1) What are the things to watch/beware in Groupwise that could potentially break the BES?

(2) How is the BlackBerry message flow like? E.g. Domino router (of the BES) is the delivery mechanism for the MFH (Message from Handheld) and BES polls every 20 seconds on users' mail files for new messages (MTH).

(3) How defects/changes in Groupwise could potentially halt the BlackBerry message flow? E.g. Unavailability of mail servers and non-working state of the Domino Router task on BES could stop the flow.

(4) What are the different types of organizer data items in Groupwise that can be synchronized wirelessly with BES? E.g. in Domino, contacts sync is with the Personal Address Book (names.nsf) and memo sync is with the Journal NSF file. Calendar and To-Do (task) items are built-in with mail files by default etc.

(5) Which are the top major issues that you constantly see that they re-occur between Groupwise and BES? E.g. in Domino, we constantly have hung threads issue due to Notes mail databases corruptions (can be views or documents or database file itself). We also have read/unread reconcilations issue due to Access Control permissions and unstable Domino clustering of mail files etc. Just to quote a few.

(6) Which BES logs should you start looking when there is an issue? E.g. In Domino, we always start with the Messaging Agent (MAGT) log and start looking for keywords like "No Response" to lookup hung threads.

(7) What are some of the online research websites apart from the Blackberry Technical Solution Center? Any good BESG forums or resource bases?

I have many more but couldn't gather all thoughts at one go but will definitely post more later for sure. Hope you could kindly share so that I can be better prepared mentally for any big issues waiting down the road. Thanks in advance.

[GaryCutri]

Hi,

1. BES for GroupWise can be very delicate so be careful about update GW Clients or installing service packs (some service packs need the GW client to be updated).

2. Please refer to the “Feature and Technical Overview” document attached and you will find all the relevant information under “Messaging process flows”.

3. You need to be careful making any change in Console One that changes the supported client versions or PO permissions. Check out this link for some basic troubleshooting tips: Perform basic troubleshooting steps for Novell GroupWise

4. BES for GroupWise can sync all data and also has an option to select different address books. You will need to get familiar with personal and “Common Contacts” (this is automatically populated).

5. The most common issues with GroupWise are contact sync issues (not synchronizing or duplicates appear) and PO permissions. If an Admin messes with the Trusted Application Keys it will cause issues.

6. With GroupWise you also start at the MAGT log.

7. You will find GroupWise support very limited but if you are in Australia I can refer you to a BES\GroupWise Guru.

Also just as an FYI BES for GW it always behind Exchange and Domino so you may have to wait many months longer for service packs and maintenance releases. Recently we migrated a number of GW sites over to Exchange as it is getting harder to get any support for third party applications.

Thanks,

Gary

[noname]

Thanks, GaryCutri. Nice to have a guide to know where to start looking. I will sure to keep posting BESGW questions here!