Question : Problem: Co-oporate email on Blackberry 8320

HI Everyone

we run exchange 2003 server and have a user who has bought a blackberry 8320

he wants access to his emails on this phone, and quickly! We don’t have time to look into installing BES (although I understand its free for 1 user and is the only way to get all the benefits)

 

Can someone please suggest the quickest way to configure this phone to have access to his inbox and also be able to send messages using imap.

Answer : Problem: Co-oporate email on Blackberry 8320

I do have a work-around to propose...
When presented with a similar request I:

1). Configured the user with a BLACKBERRY internet email address. (My user was a Verizon subscriber). So I visited the Blackberry web portal. You enter the ESN/PIN of the blackberry and create a [email protected].net email account. Next I edited the accounts settings (in the web admin panel) to display as his WORK email address. Basically you mask who the email is being sent from. So when he sends emails from his blackberry it comes through as USER_NAME@our_domain.com (not the @vzw.blackberry.net address).  Next I enabled forwarding on the exchange server side. All emails which are delivered to the users inbox are subsequently delivered to his [email protected].net address...

Issues: Obviously this is not as good as IMAP or having a BES- However it did provide this user access to his inbox contents (at least what was delivered post configuration). This also enabled the user to send/reply emails from the blackberry. Recipients of his messages are none the wiser. If you were to check the email headers you would see it went through the vzw.blackberry.net mail servers, but this is did not matter in my case.

Let me know if this is a viable solution or you need clarification on my existing setup.