PIN Broadcast Lists for BlackBerry

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Synopsis

Enterprises have found it useful to send a Group Broadcast via BlackBerry PIN Messaging. BlackBerry PIN Groups can range in size from just a few members, to hundreds or thousands of BlackBerry handhelds.

In the itrezzoAgent Administrator, an EPS Mandatory Contact List (MCL) is defined to push groups of contacts to groups of users. For example, all members of the contacts for the Emergency Response Team members are automatically pushed to the recipients, in this example, both the members of the Emergency Response Team and the Disaster Recovery Team. When an administrator right clicks on this MCL and chooses Make PIN Distribution List, all of the recipients are enabled for sending a PIN Broadcast to Emergency Response Team.

This Wiki describes what a PIN Broadcast list is. Second, it explains the historical reasons it serves to compliment the BlackBerry Enterprise Server from Research In Motion. Thirdly, it also covers and how to use itrezzoAgent EPS to configure, execute and troubleshoot PIN Broadcast Lists.

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History

BlackBerry PIN to PIN communication is automatically enhanced by the itrezzoAgent EPS software. For example, each BlackBerry user on your system automatically gets the correct PIN for every pre-existing contact in their address book. Thus peer to peer comunication is very easy between members of the same organization.

Being able to send a message to a group of BlackBerry recipients has a few more challenges. The BlackBerry Address book does have a group object. If a BlackBerry handheld is running BlackBerry OS 4.2 or higher, the BlackBerry group (the equivalent of Personal Distribution Lists in Microsoft Outlook) can also have BlackBerry PIN members. Note that in BlackBerry OS 4.1 or lower, there was no ability to send PIN messages to via the personal group object.

Since the BlackBerry Enterprise Server synchronizes the Outlook Address Book of each Microsoft Exchange user, it would follow that the itrezzoAgent EPS software could create Personal Distribution Groups in the Outlook Address Book, and than those Personal Distribuion Lists would just sync with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. However, the BlackBerry Address Book group object has unique architectural features from the Outlook Address Book and does not sync group objects between the users Outlook Address Book and the BlackBerry Address Book.