Who manages your smartphone/blackberry?

[danek]

Years ago, I took the role of managing my company's fleet of smartphones used to connect/sync with our Outlook (email, callendar, contacts, etc.). It's been a bit of a headache and I'm rather tired of users whining about, "why don't we get a such-and-such phone" and other compaints.

My question to you all is: Does your company provide a phone/device for your use and set it up and trouble-shoot it for you, or are you responsible for setting up the synchronization and basic phone-workings-troubleshooting yourself?

 

[phantomsphan]

Where I work, you are responsible for buying your own device and paying for it and the service, but we provide access to a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES). I am the systems administrator so I handle this. For ease of management and better security, we only support Blackberry devices. BES allows you to wireless sync up to your Exchange account (or whatever mail solution you use). Email, contacts, tasks and etc. When someone quits, all it takes is the click of a button and BOOM... everything on their device is wiped. No worries about stolen trade secrets or whatever.

As far a troubleshooting, we do it to a point. If the user can't get their device connected to the BES or something isn't syncing... I'll troubleshoot the device and try to resync it or whatever. However, if I find out the problem is with the user's service provider or the physical device, I'll hand it back to them to deal with (since it is their device and they pay for it).

Hope that helps.

 

[WhosYerBob]

Does your company provide a phone/device for your use and set it up and trouble-shoot it for you, or are you responsible for setting up the synchronization and basic phone-workings-troubleshooting yourself?

In our work environment, personally owned computing devices (desktops, laptops, netbooks, PDAs, smartphones and all the like) are completely banned from connecting to our network.

If someone wants a phone, smartphone or PDA for any reason - the solution is all the same - a BlackBerry.

The rules for obtaining and using a BlackBerry are severe:

• The request for the device must come from the top of the chain of command for the assigned employee.

• The group the employee is assigned to must allocate an IT startup cost of $500, plus $35 per month for the BlackBerry Enterprise Software seat that it uses, plus pay for the monthly cell bill from Verizon and for the device itself.

• No personal calls are allowed and the bills are reviewed at the end of every month to verify compliance.

• No apps are allowed to be installed by the employee.

• Anytime an employee goes outside of the US, the device must be scanned and imaged. When the employee returns, the device must be scanned again before connecting to any internal desktops or network. If there is a change detected on the device (evidence of hacking or malware), the device is securely wiped and rebuilt from scratch.

Needless to say, only a few people have them in our environment, and they're mostly managers.

 

[kwk285]

Our company gave us(cursed us) with Blackberries in February. Up to that point, they paid a certain dollar amount a month for my personal phone.

Now I am able to send and reveive company emails better but I feel the phone sucks. I can barely hear people and them me. A few months back my phone stopped working so they sent me a new phone. The sound quality was just as bad with this one. Our phones are though Verizon. I am guessing it is the poor quality of the blackberries and not verizon that is causing this problem.

 

[michael.scheller]

I am one of the few people in the Army Knowledge Online email system (big Army not the local stuff) who uses the Outlook Web App instead of the Webmail app which the majority (such as my wife) use. I'm able to tie in very seamlessly with the Exchange server with my iPhone including contacts, mail, calendar, task. It is G R E A T ! !

Unfortunately, the local (post) LAN email system has no such interface and the higher muckety mucks must use RIM Blackberrys to interact with theirs.

 

[luvmysuper]

Years ago, I took the role of managing my company's fleet of smartphones used to connect/sync with our Outlook (email, callendar, contacts, etc.). It's been a bit of a headache and I'm rather tired of users whining about, "why don't we get a such-and-such phone" and other compaints.

My question to you all is: Does your company provide a phone/device for your use and set it up and trouble-shoot it for you, or are you responsible for setting up the synchronization and basic phone-workings-troubleshooting yourself?

Each Field rep purchases his own smart phone, and is responsible in all ways for problems, trouble shooting and connections.
We do not use Enterprise server, the phones all connect through secure web service.
The guys who use the phone as a tethered modem as opposed to having an air card are re-imbursed a larger amount than those who simply have a "phone" and still need an air card.

 

[danek]

It sounds as if I'm an exception to the norm. We have a small fleet of devices (25 or so) and use Good Mobile Messaging to synchronize with our Exchange server. We buy our sales staff and managers smartphones (HTC Ozone), port their number to our account for phone/data service (Verizon), and completely handle all technical support. I'm considering pushing some of this responsibility back on the users; it's sounding like a better idea all the time.

 

[professorchaos]

Not me! Those BES servers are full time job I do not want!!

 

[chainfire]

Not me! Those BES servers are full time job I do not want!!

No doubt...not only that, but since people have the phones with them all the time, do companies expect 24hr support for them, or do you only give support during normal business hours?

 

[phantomsphan]

No doubt...not only that, but since people have the phones with them all the time, do companies expect 24hr support for them, or do you only give support during normal business hours?

Well, when you are an IT admin... you kinda are expected to give 24hr support. That's the job normally.

As far as BES being a hassle.. of all the things I support (100+ users, SQL, Exchange, IIS, backups and etc.), BES is a total rock for me. In 6+ years at my current job I can count on 2 hands how many times I had to contact RIM for support, and half of them were during a difficult domain migration project, which was to be expected. Of course with anything, YMMV.

 

[danek]

I'm not familiar with BES/Blackberry since we've always used a Windows platform. The synchronization piece is simple. It either works or it doesn't, but I personally set up each device to our sync server. Support issues I face is "I can't pair my bluetooth device," "my phone is too slow," "battery life sucks," that sort of thing. The users have been very good about seeking service during business hours, as there's not a whole lot I can do without holding the device in my hand to troubleshoot.