BlackBerry and Notes 8 Ghost Calendar EntriesWe haven't yet rolled out Notes 8 (and when we do, it will be the basic configuration - probably 8.0.1) but, as I am using a Notes 8 client served by a Domino 8 server, I demonstrated the Notes 8 ghost calendar entries feature to him anyway.
This demonstration and the promise of a Q2 roll out of Notes 8 satisfied him and I thought nothing more of it until...
I received a meeting invitation a day or so ago and I opened it on my BlackBerry first. It showed up in the BlackBerry looking like a simple email, with a subject line beginning "Invitation:" and a blank body.
Because this came from an external sender who I know uses Outlook/Exchange I concluded, incorrectly, that the culprit was some broken feature of the invitation system at the remote end.
A short while ago, however, I had another meeting invitation which I viewed first on the BlackBerry. It also looked like a blank email with "Invitation:" in the subject line, but this one came from a Notes sender in the local Notes domain. There's no reason why that shouldn't work, and it has always worked in the past.
I had thoughts of pushing a new service book to my BlackBerry, or even the favoured (by RIM, anyway) nuclear option - delete and re-add the BES account - but I did neither. Instead I googled for information on the issue and found this technote.
The salient part:
Workarounds for known issues when using BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1.4 with Notes and Domino 8.
1. Ghosted Calendar Entries
When the ghosted calendar entry feature is turned on, any invitations viewed in the handheld inbox appear as an email and not an invitation (so you cannot accept or decline them).
- A fix is planned for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1.5 (SDR 134211)
Workaround: Disable ghosted calendar entries by doing any of the following:
a) Notes User: In your Notes client, go to your Inbox and then go to More > Preferences > Calendar > Display > Views. Un-check the setting 'Display new (unprocessed) notices'
b) Domino Administrator: Create/set a Mail Setting Policy (Calendar > Basics) to disable the Ghosted feature 'display new (unprocessed) notices'
c) Domino Administrator: On the BlackBerry user’s mail server, disable ghosted entries by setting the following notes.ini variable:
CSDisableDisplayUnprocessedNotices=1
This setting will disable the display of unprocessed notices in the Calendar view for all users on the server.
Option a) was sufficient to correct the issue that I had inadvertently caused myself when demonstrating ghost calendar entries to my colleague.
Note that this technote refers to BES 4.1.4. Our BES is at 4.0.7 (which is also compatible with Domino 8, though not officially supported). I do not know whether a fix for this issue is planned in the 4.0 code stream too, but we plan to migrate to BES 4.1 soon anyway.
Category: Blackberry
Technorati: BlackBerry Ghost+Calendar+Entries Notes+8
1. Mitch Cohen07/02/2008 12:58:30
Homepage: http://www.curiousmitch.com
BES 4.0 Had an End of Support date of January 31, 2008,( http://www.blackberry.com/LifeCycle/external/index.do;jsessionid=0Tb+6F1n3ZdSQwDKE3GwOA** ) and there are no plans for ND8 support in 4.0. We just upgraded our last server from 4.0 to 4.1 yesterday and are eagerly awaiting the 4.1.5 release so that ghosted calendar entries can be used, and not impact blackberries.
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