Microsoft CRM Mobile Express and Blackberry

After implementing Mobile Express in our Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 environment, we found that some users with Blackberry smartphones could not open the Mobile Express site.  We knew it was not a bug with Mobile Express, as these same phones could successfully launch Mobile Express in some of our client’s environments, just not ours.

Through the process of elimination, we found that the issue was Blackberry Browser related.  The Blackberry actually has two browsers—the Blackberry Browser and the Internet Browser.  When you launch the web browser on the Blackberry, if you go to options, General Options, you will see a dropdown for Browser.  The default setting is Blackberry Browser, but you can change that setting to Internet Browser.  The issue we found was that the Blackberry browser does not correctly interpret security certificates from some providers—that explained why these phones could correctly load the Mobile Express site from some environments but not from others.

After changing the setting to “Internet Browser,” Mobile Express loaded correctly for these users.  Until the next phone upgrade.

Some of our Blackberry users recently upgraded to the latest version of the Blackberry Tour or Curve.  We changed the browser settings on these phones to “Internet Browser,” but they still could not access Mobile Express.   We found that on these new phones, after changing and saving the browser settings, it would reset back to “Blackberry Browser.”

We were able to fix this issue using the process outlined on Blackberry.com to configure an IT Policy on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to allow only the Internet Browser on the BlackBerry smartphone.  Following the change, we re-registered the policies on the phones by going to option->advanced options->host routing table->register now.

Now the Blackberries use the Internet Browser, and Mobile Express works great for them.

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft Dynamics CRM,Mobile Express,Blackberry

Comments

[Erik van Hoof]

Hi Joel,

Can we persuade you to try and use CWR Mobile CRM on your BlackBerries? That way you do not only have access via the webbrowser, but you will have a native app experience, with the capabilities to also work offline.

Please let us know. You can contact us at sales at cwrmobility dot com.

Kind regards,

Erik van Hoof
CWR Mobility BV

[Joel Lindstrom]

Hi Erik,
Thanks for your comment. I have used your product, and I think it's great. I usually recommend it to anyone who needs heavy crm functionality on their blackberries.
Our use case is a bit different--we have an email notification that goes to a user when a case is assigned to them. That email has a hyperlink to open the case in CRM, and also a hyperlink to Mobile Express if they are on their blackberries. Mobile Express works great for this scenario, as users can click the hyperlink and edit the case from their smartphone browser.