Début

#1 Email Prepopulation

1. Feature introduced around BES 4.0 as a way to bring over all old messages to the device when adding new user to the BES.
2. Enabled by default on the server level to send header information only (can be modified to send the whole message).
3. Automatically pre-populates previously received email messages from email server onto the new device.
4. Can support a maximum of 14 days or 750 messages (ver. 4.1.2 or above), whichever is the least amount. Default is 5 days or 200 messages for Inbox and Sent folder.
5. Only initiated during an Enterprise Activation (EA) of a new user or a device swap (exchanging PIN) where BES will go into user mailbox and grab these previously received messages and send a copy of these emails to handheld.
6. For existing user, by default old messages do not carried over to existing device (if the device was wiped and then later reactivated). Although there is a known hack discussed in forums to enable this to work. If existing users wanted to carry over their old messages to an existing device, that user has to be completely removed and re-added back into BES. In this case it is treated as new user.
7. On the other hand if an existing BB user is swapping BB device email prepopulation is possible because BES detected a new PIN being assigned to the user. It also can be done through Desktop Manager (DM)’s ‘Swap Handheld’ feature or through EA.
8. When use with DM backup and restore, avoid restoring messages database or complete restore. The reason is as BES sends a copy of this email to handheld, it creates attributes and reference information for every of these messages. Both attributes and reference information are kept in the memory settings called ‘Message State Database Size’. When user reply and forward these emails, BES actually proxy the request and uses these attributes and reference information and goes into user mailbox looking for corresponding emails to perform such actions. If you perform EA then perform a restore message database from DM, BES loses the reference information and subsequently user will lose the replying and forwarding functionality. ***This scenario was tested with different BES with different Exchange ORG and typically happen when migrating hosted mailbox user to in-house.
9. Rule of thumb: Email Prepopulation only occurs during EA of new users OR a device swap where exchanging of PIN information occurs.

BlackBerry Email Prepopulation

It is very important to talk to BB users and set the expectation before performing any of the actions above.

This is particularly true to existing BB users.

Chee

Additional Reources and Useful Links:

I came across some forums that discuss registry hack that will force the pre-population to work:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Agents]
“ForceMsgPrepopOnActivation”=dword:00000001
“ForceMsgPrepopDays”=dword:0000000e
“ForceMsgPrepopMessages”=dword:000002ee

The high limits for this hack are 14 days or 750 messages. (in hex in the above entries)

Use at your own risk. As far as I know and I did the test, the new BES Manager GUI interface (See picture above) configuration does not affect or change the above registry entries. I’m not sure where the registry keys are kept.

• Viewing older messages in newly activated BlackBerry Device
• Keep Messages and Syncing More Messages with BlackBerry and BES
• KB11632 How to increase the number of email messages that appear during the enterprise activation process and message pre-population
• KB13375 Redirect email messages from subfolders during the prepopulation stage of an enterprise activation

(Note: If the link is broken, let me know or Google for KB number.)

Coming up next: #2 Wireless email reconcilliation