For over a year I've been unable to wirelessly activate one of my BlackBerrys.  Each time I tried to perform an Enterprise Activation I'd receive an error message stating:

An error has occurred. Please contact your System Administrator.

If I started activation while tethered it would [eventually] work, but there was nothing in the log files to indicate why wireless activation would fail.

I finally broke down and called RIM about it.  And of course as soon as the helpful Canuck was on the phone my wireless activation worked.  I explained my situation though and he offered a few pointers:

• Make sure the BES isn't overloaded
• Make sure the BES was close (network-wise) to the Exchange server
• And most importantly: make sure that you don't have too many rules in Outlook

The BES wasn't overloaded, it was on the same network and in the same rack as the Exchange server, but I had a pile of Outlook rules. 30 active rules to be precise.  I like my rules and I wasn't about to disable all of those rules every time I needed to activate. No, I decided to take the opposite tact and add another rule.

The activation message comes from network@etp#####.etp.REGION.blackberry.net (eg network@etp1006.etp.na.blackberry.net), the subject will be similar to RIM_adf32c10-d5a2-23a4-95df-10400821c6d3 and it will have an ETP.DAT attachment.

I created a new rule that is the very first rule.

Apply this rule after the message arrives
with na.blackberry.net in the sender's address
stop processing more rules

The rule checks all arriving messages for na.blackberry.net in the sender's address, and if it's found immediately stops processing all other rules. Short, simple and its solved my enterprise activation woes.

RIM TSupport also recommended increasing the log level of the Mailbox Agent to at least 4 – anything less than 4 doesn't yield any useful information.  You can do this from the BlackBerry Server Configuration Panel or from the Registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Logging Info\Mailbox Agent]
"DebugLogLevel"=dword:00000004

Browse to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Logging Info\Mailbox Agent and create a new DWORD value called DebugLogLevel with a decimal value of 4 (for log level 4). Valid values are 1-5 with 5 being the most verbose.

Tags: BES, BlackBerry, Enterprise Activation, Exchange, Outlook, Tips

Posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 10:12 am | Filed under BlackBerry, Technology
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