[realdeal]

I'm using exchange 2003 with BES 4.1.

Is there anyway to deliver public contacts to the blackberry?

[ebgreen]

Helpful or not, I know that it can be done. The BES admins here did it so I am sure it is probably in the BES admin documentation.

[vlw]

This is shameless self promotion but I have developed a product that has this capability as one of it's feature. It allows you to select one or more Public Folders and roll them up into a users contact folder, or a subfolder beneath the users contact folder. There is also an ability to set privacy lists on home phone numbers for example.

Check out itrezzo.com, specifically EPS. You can try it out for free.

[PaulOckenden]

Does it also allow "messaging" public folders to be viewed on the BB, as well as contacts? If so, I might mention it in my PC Pro column as I know several people have been asking for a way to see and reply to public folder messaging while on the move.

P.

[vlw]

No, this app does not push or replicate messages in Public Folders. It only does contacts or sticky notes.

On our BB Java app, we did build a prototype of a mailbox explorer that ran though MDS that could easily be adapted to a public folder.

How would you envision notifications of new posts to the public folder working? Do the users already get notified of new posts? If the user could just see the last few days of public folder activity, would that do the trick?

[PaulOckenden]

Ideally public folders would be treated just like any other messaging folder, and so would be synced into the BB message list (with the public folder being individually available via 'view folders' if needed).

But maybe that's a job that only RIM could do.

Any means to be able to examine public folders would be good though. Right now they are an essential part of Exchange Server and BlackBerry can't see them...