BES Admins can expect an update to BES 5.0 in service pack 2 that should be coming shortly as we’re now seeing leaked features. When BES 5 first launched, conversations with many BES admins about whether they’ll implement usually resulted in “we’ll wait for SP1 or SP2, but yes.” In SP2, some helpful updates include additional metrics, reports and notifications to help monitor the system health as well as user self-service tools and pre-population of messages is increased to 3000. BES 5.0 SP2 features listed after the jump.
Performance & Platform Enhancements
Enhanced Performance and Expanded Certification
• Enhanced BES to Exchange Performance
- BES no longer writes updates for user statistics to mailboxes to reduce the load on the Microsoft Exchange Server
- Contributes to lower messaging TCO
Additional Platform Certification
- Windows Server 2008 R2
- SQL Server 2008 R2 *
- MS Hyper-V 2008
Expanded Web Browser Support
Expanded Support for the following Web Browsers:
- Internet Explorer 8
- Mozilla Firefox 3.6
- Google Chrome 4.0
- Safari 4 (For Mac)
Administration BlackBerry Administration Service
Simplified usability and control from the management console
- Pre-defined administration groups added that can be used to support best practices
- IT Policy Reconciliation added to simplify policy assignment to user accounts and groups
- Better controls for searching and displaying user information
- Forced Calendar Slow Sync ensures that users will have a consistent calendaring experience (Domino Only)*
Administration BAS Enhancements (Continued) Simplified administration of BlackBerry domains and users
More BlackBerry Domain-wide configuration settings
- SQL Mirroring now configured at the domain level
- Administer BAS communication protocols at the domain level
Additional domain wide administration tool to simplify user administration
- BlackBerry Domain Search
Monitoring BlackBerry Monitoring Service (BMS)
UI improvements, additional metrics and reporting
- BMS improvements – layout of the information improved
- Additional metrics, reports and notifications introduced to help monitor system health
- Average latency checks for in coverage devices
- Monitoring and notification of uninitialized users
- Pending messages per server
Management
Enhanced Logging meeting Security & Compliance needs
- Logging Enhancements
- Expanded ability to control maximum age of daily logs for all components logged via BAS console
- Logging for BlackBerry Server Configuration Panel added
- New URL Based RSA Authentication
- More control over 2-factor RSA authentication
End User Enhancements
Improved BlackBerry Experience
- Single Sign On (SSO)
- User self service tools
- Enhanced BlackBerry experience
- Message pre-population to device
- Expanded capacity for calendar entries
Single Sign On (SSO) – Seamless access to BAS, Web
Desktop and enterprise resources
- Integrated authentication for the Web Desktop Manager
- Integrated authentication to BAS will save time for administrators
- Integrated authentication from the BlackBerry to access enterprise resources (MDS-CS SSO)
User Self Service reducing overall costs
Web Desktop enhancements:
- New capabilities introduced for managing devices
- Secure a lost device, including the ability to set password and lock
- BlackBerry if it is lost or stolen
- Delete all device data and disable the device
- Improved organization of controls in the Web Desktop Interface GUI
Enhanced BlackBerry Experience
- Device activation enhancement
- Message pre-population limits have been increased to 30 days worth of mail or 3000 messages
- BlackBerry Enterprise Server will now monitor the ‘junk’ email folder for Enterprise Activation messages
- Full body of email messages sent from the desktop delivered to the device
- Calendar entry body size increased
