Troubleshooting Blackberry Devices
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008Blackberry mobile devices have become an invaluable tool in facilitating communication in Congressional offices. So when one stops working it is expedient that the device return to normal operation as quickly as possible. This case study presents obstacles and then methods used to fix those problems.
Email has provided the world with a fast and reliable form of communication; whether it is across the nation or around the globe, we are now able to transmit information almost instantaneously. But all of this is rendered useless unless someone is on the other side to receive that information. That is why many offices have come to rely on Blackberry devices for even more reliable and instantaneous communication. On Capitol Hill, everyone from senior staff to entry-level employees to even the Member of Congress rely heavily on their Blackberry. Most of the time their Blackberry is a simple means of communication used to convey short messages or to stay in sync with the day’s calendar.
One very convenient feature of Blackberry devices is the ease of transferring all of the data from one existing Blackberry to a newer model. While, for the most part, it is a very reliable and straightforward transfer, it can be extremely frustrating when it doesn’t work correctly and has to be done over again. Since all the information is copied from the old device, there is always a backup in case things don’t transfer correctly. The transfer process goes as follows:
* First the old device must be synchronized with the user’s Outlook. This will insure that the two contain the same information in terms of contacts, address book, emails and calendar items.
* Once everything has been synced with Outlook it is time to use the switch device wizard in the Blackberry Desktop Manager. This will automatically backup all of the old emails, contacts, third-party software, and general settings. Once it has grabbed everything from the older device it prompts for the new device at which point it will load all those applications and settings back onto the new device. It usually takes about 20 minutes if things run smoothly.
* Once all the data has been transferred, the Blackberry device then must go through a process called Enterprise Activation, which authenticates the device with the Blackberry enterprise server. This will enable the device to send email as a user. This is where most of the frustration with switching users comes in. It has to go through all the services and sync those settings with those of the existing account. Depending on how much the user has utilized their Blackberry, it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. It often appears to freeze at a certain percentage of completion. When this happens, most of the time, removing the battery and starting the process over again forces the activation to complete. But, if the user has utilized their phone heavily, it may just have to authenticate a large amount of data and take a longer amount of time.
I encountered a problem with a set of Blackberry devices in a legislative office that was particularly perplexing. When the user made a call which didn’t connect or went to voicemail and, simultaneously, received an incoming call – the phone would go into conference mode. However, when the call ended, it wouldn’t leave this mode. Instead, it would just refuse to make any outgoing calls. When this happened, only taking out the battery would re-enable the phone. Because this started to really affect a Congressman, it quickly became a priority to get it fixed. After ‘googling’ the problem with no success, I decided that the best attempt would be to update the firmware on the Blackberry. It was a long process that first backed up the entire device and then updated the firmware. After that was completed, it reloaded the backed up data. Following that procedure the Blackberry worked without further support needs.