Blackberry client

[peterbrass]

Are there any plans for a "real" Blackberry client? We're able to use the 3rd party XMPP IM clients (BeejiveIM in particular) but have noticed some inconsistent results when logged in concurrently with the desktop client and a 3rd party client. A real client would go a long way towards providing a consistent user experience.

[zdeak]

Hi Peter -

We are looking into developing mobile clients - specifically for the iphone and blackberry (can't comment on specific models).  These are things that are on our product roadmap, though unfortunately I can't give you any sort of concrete delivery date as planning is still going on.  Safe to say though that this will take us a little while (we're very focused on getting a rich Mac client out first) and I don't expect we'll have anything until the end of this calendar year at the very earliest.

[peterbrass]

Thanks for the response. We'll likely get by with the option of 3rd party XMPP clients. That said, we've noticed some erratic behavior when concurrently connected with the desktop client and a 3rd party client. Specifically, we can get into a situation where the person logged in twice shows up multiple times in another person's contact list. When in that state, there's no way for the other party to know which appearance is which. We're concerned that will lead to effectively undelivered messages.

I opened up a support ticket on this one too. If there's a way to simply auto-logout desktop clients when connecting from the 3rd party client, that would likely solve the issue.

[allsopj]

Hi Peter, you say BeejiveIM should work, are there any special settings we need to apply to get it to work on our BlackBerrys

[peterbrass]

BeejiveIM is working for us well enough here. There are definitely some issues that show up while logged into the desktop client concurrently. Unfortunately, logging into 3rd party XMPP clients does not seem to automatically log you out of the WebEx desktop client.

That said, all you have to do is to create a new Jabber account and reference your WebEx Connect username and password. In addition, you'd need your company's service DNS record that was created for this purpose.If they set a custom port number, you'd need that as well (the default is 5222 I believe).

The last thing to mention is that your company's admin would need to have allowed access for 3rd party XMPP clients. I'm not sure if that's enabled by default or not, but it can definitely be disabled.

Here's the link for setting up the correct DNS entry: http://www.webex.com/webexconnect/orgadmin/help/index.htm?toc.htm?cs_xmpp_im_client.htm

Hope this helps.

[SPeters31]

Hi Peter - Wondering if you have figured out all the configuration options for Beejive, we can't get it to work.  Specifically:

Network:  Jabber

HOST: "Default" ?

Port:5222 or 443?

SSL Option  "TLS" ?

Resource:  <blackberry model> ?

Priority :  "Default" ?

Editing the port #, account ID, and password are easy enough, but the rest is a bit cryptic.  Your reference to the DNS entry is also confusing... If a BB is on a mobile network, where would you add the DNS?

Any help is appreciated.

[allsopj]

This works on mine:

host: isj3cmx.webexconnect.com

port: default   (which is most probably 5222 but just entering default seems to work for me)

SSL Option: TLS

Resource: wbxconnect

Priority: Default

John

[peterbrass]

Network:  Jabber

HOST: "Default" ?

Port:5222 or 443?

SSL Option  "TLS" ?

Resource:  <blackberry model> ?

Priority :  "Default" ?

On the above, I'd recommend the following:

Network:  Jabber

HOST: <see below>

Port: DEFAULT (unless your admin has set it to something other than 5222)

SSL Option  TLS

Resource:  (haven't found this to matter)

Priority :  (haven't found this to matter)

on the host setting... if your DNS records are setup correctly, you *should* be able to just enter in the domain name associate with your WEC account (e.g. jsmith@cisco.com would just have cisco.com entered here). That said, in practice, this is absolutely not working for us so I could easily be wrong in my interpretations. The trick we've used is to bypass the "service" DNS record i referenced earlier and just put in the end destination. The template for that appears to be "c2s.<your domain>.webexconnect.com" (to use the above example again, it would be c2s.cisco.com.webexconnect.com).

While this certainly works to allow for connecting 3rd party XMPP (jabber) clients to the WEC service, I'm not sure if there is any functionality/compatibility that is lost by bypassing the service record. Honestly, it seems to be just a matter of convenience.

Hope this helps

[SPeters31]

The "C2S.etc.etc.etc." string for the host field was the key.  Worked like a charm.  Thanks for your help!

[allsopj]

http://wikicentral.cisco.com/confluence/display/MOBILESERV/BB+Beejive

This is a link to the internal (Cisco) Wiki for BeeJive set up on BlackBerry, it also has some additional security recommendations as well as how to set it up on the BlackBerry

[alkampman]

Hi Peter,

Dont know if you have seen the client being anounced already, but it has been released:

Cisco Jabber IM for BlackBerry with support for webex connect:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6789/ps7290/ps11763/data_sheet_c78-677119.html

Aljen