I had the opportunity yesterday to activate a half dozen Blackberry Torch 9800 handsets on an a BES express server. I’d not had one of the devices in my hand before then – the hybrid drop down keyboard will take some getting used to but the issue at hand was the location of the activation options for BES.
I’d had been speaking to a user and tried talking them through the normal activati0n process but they could not locate the option for the activation. After googling I tried a different tack but the best this could do was to locate a menu that mention activation but that had no activation options on it.
I remembered something that RIM support had told me during a previous activation problem and was able to use the web administration console – installed as part of the BES installation to assign a USB attached handset to a predefined user. The process was a little hit and miss until I discovered that the problem related to a failure of the activex control needed to run this setup. Basically you should ensure that the https:// site address of the bes server is in the trusted sites list in IE before attempting to connect to it and install the activex. (if its not working you will not see any options under the connected devices (+) symbol)
Note you don’t have to do this on the machine with BES on it – do it from any pc that can browse to the bes published address – that is displayed when you install the BES !!
Once installed successfully you will be able to attach the handset – wait until windows recognises it – select the connected devices option and then the final option on that list (associate) and then associate it with the user who will be using the handset. The device will display a message that it wants a reboot – do this now!!
The other thing to watch out for is that depending on the number of mails and contacts to be synched from the users exchange account – leave the device alone and don’t attempt anything until it has finished the activation – you will see it in the web console – with the type of device that the handset is. If you don’t see the device type either the activation hasn’t completed or possibly the bes needs an update to its device list to properly recognise it.
Finally – 1 out of the 6 handsets threw an error after the activation – resending the service books and waiting until its device type appeared correctly in the web console fixed the problem (this one had a lot of mail and contacts to sync.
You can select to resend the service books inside the web console tool.