After September 11, 2001, many organizations began updating their emergency and Continuity of Operations (COOP) plans. One component of those plans addresses how emergency response teams, management, and other crucial staff communicate. Many organizations have chosen to use Research In Motion's (RIM's) BlackBerry handheld devices for such communications because they provide multiple pathways for messages to move between handheld devices. The sidebar "BlackBerry Messaging Options" details these pathways. The advantage of having multiple message delivery paths is that they provide users with a measure of communications fault tolerance.
One pathway uses PINs to send messages. I created a script called BPS.vbs (which is short for BlackBerry Pin Synchronization) to keep BlackBerry PIN information up-to-date on handheld devices. With this script, you can effectively use PIN-based communications as part of an emergency or COOP plan.
Can I Get Your Number?
RIM assigns each BlackBerry handheld device a unique PIN, which you can use to associate the handheld device with an Exchange server mailbox. When you provision the handheld device on RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server, BES uploads the PIN and stores it with other configuration information. Unfortunately, BES doesn't incorporate the PIN in the associated mailbox's directory entry, which means that you can't find someone's PIN by looking in Active Directory (AD) or in the Exchange Server directory, depending on your Exchange deployment. If you want to know a user's PIN, you need to contact that person directly or use BES administration tools to look up the PIN.
As you can see, the process of PIN maintenance is largely a manual task. At first thought, this task might not seem overburdening until you consider that you might need to have many users' PINs during an emergency. In addition, you might need to occasionally refresh PIN information because users might exchange one device for another. Handheld devices can be lost, stolen, replaced, upgraded, or even transferred to another user. When you consider these scenarios, PIN maintenance becomes a much more complex and arduous task. To effectively implement an emergency or COOP plan that uses PIN-based communications, you need a way to automate the process of initially obtaining the PIN information, then keep that information up-to-date.
A BlackBerry handheld device stores its PIN in its address book, which a user keeps updated by synchronizing with Outlook. So, BPS.vbs moves PIN information from BES into AD or an Exchange directory, then examines Outlook's Contacts folder for BlackBerry users to see whether their PIN information is current. If not, the script updates the PIN information. Then, when a handheld device user synchronizes with Outlook, the PINs in the handheld device's address book are updated.
Let's take a closer look at how BPS.vbs works (in terms of concepts, not code) and how to configure and use it. You can find the script on the Exchange & Outlook Administrator Web site. Go to http://www.winnetmag.com/microsoftexchangeoutlook, enter InstantDoc ID 41955 in the InstantDoc ID box, then click the 41955.zip hotlink.
The Best Source for PINs
When you set up BES, you specify an Exchange mailbox, which RIM calls the BESAdmin account. This mailbox stores server configuration information and details about which handheld devices are assigned to the server. In an enterprisewide BlackBerry deployment, more than one BESAdmin mailbox can exist.
Exchange organizes mailboxes as sets of folders and items, much in the same way Windows OSs organize folders and files on your hard disk. At the top, or root, of any mailbox is a folder called Top of Information Store, which is also referred to as the Interpersonal Message (IPM) subtree. The IPM subtree contains the Inbox, Outbox, Contacts, and other folders that you typically access from Outlook. The BES creates hidden folders that are at a peer level to the IPM subtree. (Anything that isn't a subfolder of the IPM subtree is effectively hidden from view when you use Outlook.) The root folders that BES creates are named after the BES server that uses them. If you have a BESAdmin account that supports more than one BES server, a folder will exist for each BES server. For example, if your BESAdmin mailbox supports four BES servers (BES01, BES02, BES03, and BES04), you'd have five folders at the root of the mailbox: Top of Information Store, BES01, BES02, BES03, and BES04.
Below each BES server folder (e.g., below BES01) are child folders that store configuration information, statistics, and handheld device information. The Handhelds folder contains an item for each handheld device that the BES server supports. You can use Exchange's Mdbview utility—a tool that displays message, folder, and message-store properties—to access an item within the Handhelds folder. Four items are of interest when synchronizing PINs. As Figure 1, page 14, shows, a property code identifies each item. Property 0X6001 holds the mailbox's display name. Property 0X6002 holds the distinguished name (DN) of the directory in which the mailbox resides. Property 0X6003 holds the DN of the server that hosts the mailbox. Property 0X6004 holds the PIN in hexadecimal format. Using Collaboration Data Objects (CDO), you can access the Handhelds folder and read the information about the handheld devices. The PIN and directory DN are important values for synchronization; the other values are useful for logging and troubleshooting.