Howto: Train a BES administrator
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A quick eMail from Ray Bilyk:
Love your Blog! Quick question... As a experienced Domino Admin being moved to support BlackBerry as well, what books/manuals do you suggest I get and read? Money IS an object (if you know what I mean).Well, anything that starts off with 'Love your blog!' will obviously get our attention.
This is actually a really good question. How did we get to this level ?
From my point of view, it all started when one customer of my company - HADSL - asked that we incorporate BlackBerry functionality into our product. The customer arranged for us to tag along to a training day they were given by their carrier (Vodafone in the UK), and we were taught the absolute basics - adding a new handset, nuking a handset, upgrading the firmware on a handset, etc. This cannot be under-rated as a training exercise, believe me. Just having someone there to answer the first 10 or so dumb questions that spring into your head is a lifesaver. Rob Owen of Vodafone did a stand up job, and left us all with a really positive feeling.
After that, I dig into the BlackBerry Enterprise Server manuals themselves, and that seemed to do the trick. Also, I downloaded a QuickStart BES, put it on a test server and generally abused that for testing and developing. I'm guessing it took me a few days of floundering around to get comfortable with the processes.
What resources did other folks find really useful out there ?
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Comments
I hope this helps.
Posted by Mike Burford At 22:14:16 On 09/04/2008 | - Website - |
For me, it was baptism by fire. I personally don't think it's that difficult IF you don't muck around with things you don't understand too well.
When I built my first 4.0 BES, we just kind of threw it on the box and didn't modify things too much. I think our default policy was like 3 or 4 things. Our main concern was getting the units on the BES. Enterprise Activation in 4.0 was buggy but I'm of the opinion that it made me stronger because it forced me to really dig into the EA process and in turn how the whole BB Solution works.
I'd agree that RIM has some great documentation. If you have tSupport, that's a great thing too. tSupport has some webinars coming up on "Troubleshooting the Blackberry Enterprise Solution"; "How to upgrade to 4.1.5" and "Troubleshooting BlackBerry Enterprise Activation". I'm not sure if it was mentioned but the BlackBerry Resource Center has some really good stuff. [url={ Link } BlackBerry Resource Center [/url]
The aforementioned Pinstack and BlackberryForums. I mentioned this yesterday in another comment here but carrier relationships make 'em and maintain 'em. They'll often times be a really good resource.
I'm in the process of training a guy who isn't as familiar with Domino or BES's but he knows Windows, Notes and handheld side really well. As I show him stuff, I can see the light bulbs go off because he's putting the whole thing together. So, even working with the units really pays off.
RIM is in the process of developing a certification program. They have some draft info on the various pieces of the certs here. There are 3 or 4 Domino specific courses.
[url={ Link } BES Cert Info [/url]
That's about all I have for 1:30 AM. Hope it helps!
Posted by Tim Lorge At 06:32:49 On 10/04/2008 | - Website - |
We got the BES QuickStart edition (as was at the time - I think it was v4.1), read some of the manual, tried the install so far to see what options were there and make sure there was nothing too scary.
After that, ran the install, floundered around a bit with adding a user, but was totally blown away by the ease of activation on the handset.
You could probably condense the key setup points down to a page.
I'm a big fan of training, but if you feel up to it, don't mind a bit of hair pulling, *really* know Domino then frankly its not that difficult (especially if you just want a basic setup).
And yes, great blog Bill
Posted by Scott At 11:56:54 On 10/04/2008 | - Website - |
RIM instructor was was very good.
www.blackberry.com/training
Posted by John F At 17:17:23 On 16/04/2008 | - Website - |