In this article I shall look at what to check when your BlackBerry users are unable to either receive mail, send mail, or both.
This article will only examine how to troubleshoot BES when deployed against an Exchange server rather than Domino or Groupwise.

As Microsoft license the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol to an ever wider range of device and software manufacturers, it is important to understand how the technology operates and what to check when it doesn't work.

Exchange ActiveSync is the Microsoft protocol that enables the remote push-based bi-directional synchronisation of user mailbox data, including email, contacts, calendar and task information over the air.

Fixed Cellular Terminals (FCTs), are devices typically used with private telephone systems for least-cost routing purposes. Essentially a mobile phone, these devices can be connected to a trunk port on a PBX to route calls made from desk extensions to mobile numbers over the cellular network rather than via the landline provider, a mobile-to-mobile call being cheaper than a landline-to-mobile call.

Establishing a virtual private network (VPN) connection from a cellular device can be quite a complicated affair and when troubleshooting issues it is necessary to understand what is happening in the background to be able to identify what might be going wrong.

Sending and receiving faxes over a cellular connection is rapidly becoming a 'black art' as more and more MNOs either drop support for "mobile-originate" or "mobile-terminate" fax altogether, or forget to train their customer services staff on the network's fax capabilities.

If you are unable to send or receive emails for any reason, there are 5 main areas to look at:

• Software configuration
• DNS
• Firewall
• Server issues
• Mobile network operator

Field workers today are, quite frankly, spoiled.

The devices we use to connect to the Internet while on the move are becoming increasingly faster, easier to install and easier to use. It is easy to forget to days of dial-up connections, of manually editing initialisation strings to set your device to a precious HSCSD as opposed to plain old CSD mode…of having to actually ‘make it work’.