Blackberry Bes Altert's

Setup Mail File to Receive Bes Alert's

The first thing I would say is don't. The bes alert system gives you some great errors that help you give better support to users so why would you not want to use it. The system generates for our 2,000 users some 200,000 to 300,000 emails a day. It can bring your mail file and your email backbone to its knees. I can't think of anyone who could ever use this tool in production for a large user base. Its just a joke. I have tried and tried to report this to RIM but they just don't want to look at the bigger picture. Every time I open a call they just close it working as designed. Well the design is there to break your email system so stay well clear of this tool. If you want to feel the pain for yourself then follow these instructions.

This first section is on how to setup and use the BES Alert/Blackberry Messaging System.
I hope can learn from my mistakes and help me build up the list of issues and solutions.


The old solution was to wade through the Alert logs to find out what is going on.

If you have never tried this then I suggest you don't. It's a right royal pain.

RIM have introduced a new solution to save you going into this log and finding out what errors are going on. They have called this solution Bes Alert and its sometimes know as the Blackberry Messaging Agent.

The idea is that the Bes Alert service will email you if there are any errors.

But be warned right now. I have recieved over 150,000 emails in a single day and we only have 1,500 blackberry users on three bes servers.

Make sure you read everything here before you even think of turning it on else you can say goodbye to your inbox.







What we are going to do is set up rules in our mail file so that rather than just having a full inbox of subjects saying Blackberry Messaging Agent. (how usefull is that)

What you need to do is create a folder for each type of error that the Bes ALert service will send you. What I also do is as I am working out what errors go together I place both those in the same folder.

When I have a solution to an error or I have know what it is trying to tell me then I put this info into a support document for our help desks. I then make the number at the front of the folder the same as the reference in the document. i.e. if someone sees an error in 1.1 Inbox not found then if they go to the proactive blackberry support document section 1.1 they will find out how to solve this error.














Now we have the folders we can then setup a mail rule for each group of emails that should go into that folder.

What I plan on doing is setting this up in an admin mail file so that people can logon look at the folders and see how many messages are in each folder.

If the folder has a number then they need to take the appropriate action from the proactive blackberry support document to fix the issue.

Extracts from that document will be on this site so you can build your own.

Setup Bes Alert's

Now you have the mail file ready to recieve the millions of emails that RIM will try and send you it's time to setup the bes Alert.
You need to run the Bes Manager on the server as it puts details in the server's registry not the SQL database. Don't ask my why someone must have thought it was a good idea.
Then you need to select the server you are on and go into the server properties. The second option we are looking for is BES Alert. (I know you could have guessed that by now) Here you will setup smtp details.
When you select user notificaton you should select error as this will incude Critical. Don't for the moment go any lower as this is going to fill your inbox on its own.



Once we set it up we got errors in the logs Domain name required for sender address. Even though we had set a domain in the bes alert. The only reason you don't see a domain in the pictures is because I don't want you all emailing me at work.
To get around this problem you need to add the MxDisabled to the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHING\SOFTWARE\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\BESAlert
Then you need to set this value to 1.
Then sit back and wait for the emails to come flooding in.

Inbox not found!

! BlackBerry Messaging Agent SERVERNAME (Application Event Log on SERVERNAME) | 09/24/2008 06:14.47 (EFFF28AB) -> Inbox not found! (persons name)
This means the State Database Filders list for the BlackBerry device user is missing the $Inbox folder.
I have my own solution to fix this. The RIM solution is to take actions at the device. But this way you don't have to contact the user, you can just get them back up and running ASAP.
To restore the missing filders, perfomr the following steps:

Turn off sync on the bes for the user. Delete all folders from the BackBerry dervice user's State Database by selecting Edit> Select All> Delete, while the Mail Folders view is open in the state Database. Turn on wireless dync on the server.
Refresh the State Database by selecting View > Refresh or Click F9. Verify that the folders list is populated. Test message flow.