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Blackberry – Phone Displays New Email But No New Emails Found

August 30, 2011 By Michael O'Coners 1 Comment

At some point in time most Blackberry users will find themselves perplexed as to why their beloved Blackberry displays new email but no new emails can be found. I don’t run into this issue often but when I do it becomes an unwanted game of hide and seek. The emails do exist (typically) so its just a matter of finding them.

Here’s how you find those hidden messages for Blackberry OS versions 5, 6, and 7. Note that 5 is slightly different from versions 6 and 7. I’ll display version 5 first.

Version 5

Try a soft reset first. Here’s how if you don’t know already. If that doesn’t work continue.

  1. From the home screen go to your Messages folder
  2. Select the BlackBerry menu key.
  3. Then select search

You will want to fill in the search criteria to be as broad as possible.  Set it as the following:

  • Services = All Services
  • Folder = All Folders
  • Show = Unopened Only
  • Type = All
  • Then select search.

This method will show all unread messages on your phone in any folder. From here you can take action on these messages as you normally would.

Version 6 and 7

Try a soft reset first. Here’s how if you don’t know already. If that doesn’t work continue.

  1. From the home screen go to your messages folder
  2. Select the BlackBerry menu key.
  3. Then select search
  4. Scroll to the right and select “Change Criteria” (The magnifying glass)
  5. Select Advanced Search

You will want to fill in the search criteria to be as broad as possible.  Set it as the following:

  • Services = All Services
  • Folder = All Folders
  • Show = Unread Only
  • Type = All
  • Then select search.

 This method will show all unread messages on your phone in any folder. From here you can take action on these messages as you normally would.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Filed Under: Blackberry Tagged With: ,

Blackberry Bold 9900 – Soft and Hard Resets

August 28, 2011 By Michael O'Coners Leave a Comment

If the time should ever arise where you need to reset your Blackberry you should always think in terms of your personal computer. A soft reset in the Blackberry world is similar to a “Control+Alt+Delete” in the PC world. Unless you are locking/unlocking your computer, “Control+Alt+Delete” typically reboots your computer. Power remains supplied to the hardware and the PC goes through a software reset – or “soft” reset. A hard reset is similar to just unplugging your PC power cord or pulling out your laptop battery.

The same types of resets apply to Blackberry devices. You can perform a soft reset or a hard reset. Be sure not to confuse a soft or hard reset with a “factory reset”. A factory reset in Blackberry is considered a security wipe and is beyond the scope of this post. When having troubles with your phone you should always perform a soft reset first. If that doesn’t work then perform a hard reset. Luckily smartphones are designed to survive through hard resets much more than a PC but because there are not so literally millions of moving parts it’s always best to avoid them.

To perform a soft reset on a Blackberry 9900 perform the following. Note that this same soft reset applies to most Blackberry devices manufactured in the past 5 years. So this will work on older Bolds, Curves, etc.

From the Blackberry keypad press “alt”, “Right Shift (Caps key aA)”, and “del” all at the same time.

The phone should “reboot”.

To perform a hard reset, just pull the back cover off while taking great care not to break it. Then pull the battery, wait 30 seconds or so (I never do), and put the battery back in.

More Information

http://www.blackberry.com/support

Filed Under: Blackberry Tagged With: ,

How to Configure and Troubleshoot Call Park on Cisco Unified Communications Manager

August 27, 2011 By Michael O'Coners 2 Comments

The following post applies to Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8.6 but will also work on version 7 through 8.5.

The Cisco Unified Communications Manager Call Park feature allows a phone user to place a call on hold so it can be retrieved from another phone in the Cisco Unified Communications Manager system/cluster (assuming proper call routing). While on an active call, a phone user can “Park” the call to a Call Park extension by pressing the Park softkey or the Call Park button. This of course depends on the type of phone in use. Another phone user can pick up the parked call by dialing the Call Park extension used to place the call on park.

A usage example would be a phone call coming in to the operator. The operator answers the call and the caller asks to have a party paged over the intercom system. The operator presses the Park softkey and the call park number assigned displays on the phone screen (9201, for example). The operator pages “Bob you have a call parked on 9201”. Bob hears the page over the intercom system and dials 9201 to retrieve the call.  

 The configuration is rather simple but don’t let its simplicity fool you. As with all aspects of configuring a phone system, there are still things you need to consider.

 Configuring Call Park

 From Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) go to Call Routing then Call Park. Determine how many call park extensions you need. Note that a single directory number or a range of directory numbers can be configured as call park extension numbers but a wildcard format is used so you can add ranges in quantities of 10 or 100. Ensure that a unique call park range is configured on each CUCM in the cluster to ensure redundancy. In this example we will use ranges of 10 in a CUCM cluster of two servers (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

  1. Configure the Call Park Number/Range. I’m using 920X in this example. This will provide 10 call park numbers starting at 9200 through 9209.
  2. Configure a description.
  3. Assign to a partition. Note that if you need to prevent classes of users from parking calls or restrict parking, assign the call park numbers to a partition then place that partition in corresponding calling search space (CSS). For example, you may not want courtesy phones to have call park functionality so you will need to make sure they don’t have the call park partition in their CSS.
  4. Assign the CUCM. Ensure, once again, that you assign a unique range for each CUCM.

 That’s it. The end result for two CUCMs would look something like this (Figure 2).

 Figure 2. (Click for larger view)

Troubleshooting Call Park
 
Troubleshooting Tips for Call Park
Problem Description Recommended Action
User cannot park calls. When the user presses the Park softkey or feature button, the call does not get parked. Ensure that a unique call park number is assigned to each Cisco Unified Communications Manager in the cluster. See the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration Guide.The partition that is assigned to the call park number does not match the partition that is assigned to the phone directory number. See the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration Guide.
The call park number does not display long enough for the user. Set the Call Park Display Timer to a longer duration. For information on setting parameters for call park, see the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Features and Services Guide.

 

More Information

 http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/admin/8_6_1/ccmfeat/fscallpk.html

Filed Under: Cisco, Unified Communications Manager Tagged With:

Saving Money (Cautiously) with Open Source Solutions

August 21, 2011 By Michael O'Coners 1 Comment

So there’s a fisherman, a Microsoft guy, an open source guy, and a preacher sitting in a boat. The fisherman looks over to the Microsoft guy and asks “Can I save money by going with open source?” The Microsoft guy answers defiantly “No. And the good news is our licensing model is far more complex and expensive.” With a perplexed look on his face the fisherman turns to the open source guy and asks the same. In a proud tone he responds “Yes. And the good news is our licensing model is free as is the software but you’ll have to hire a full-time Linux geek to support it.” Now even more confused the fisherman scratches his head and sighs “Neither one of those plans sounds good. What do you have to say preacher?” The preacher responds “Can you pass me the bait? The fish are hungry”. I know. I know. You were hoping for a punch line. Suffice it to say I’m no comedian but I do have the answer to the fisherman’s question if you are now intrigued.

For the purpose of this post open source is defined as software provided free of charge by the authors of the software code. Typically developed in collaboration with the Internet community this code is freely available and can be modified and distributed per the Open Source Initiative (OSI). In contrast proprietary software code is closed to the public and customers pay for the software. There are many advantages to either and over the years open source has gained lots of traction in business environments.

This leads us to this post, which not only proves I am not a comedian but also, and more importantly, begs to answer the question “Is open source a fit for my company?”

The short answer is “yes” it can be a fit – but use caution. There are many factors to consider. What role is the software playing? What kind of support do you need? Do you have somebody (employee or partner) who can support it? Will the end user be comfortable with the software?

Let’s start with some examples of how open source can fit.

Example 1 – GIMP

On occasion I like to work with graphic design and tweaking images for the web. The de facto standard today for image editing is Adobe Photoshop. Knowing this I head out to Adobe’s website to look at pricing. Ouch! Close to $700 for the latest Photoshop CS5. Hmmm….. No thanks. This is something I do every now and then and don’t make a living out of it. After searching around a while I find a comparable open source solution called GIMP. After a test drive I was thoroughly impressed. It did everything I needed. And for free! GIMP is an incredible tool that saved me money and I’d recommend it. As you can see in this example GIMP fit my needs just fine.

Example 2 – OpenOffice

A small company with a tight budget wants to order Microsoft Office products for Word and Excel use. However, spending $4000 ($400 x 10 users) is not in the budget. This is where open source products like OpenOffice come in handy. You can open Word, Excel, and Power Point files in OpenOffice and save in the same desired file types to share with other Word/Excel/PowerPoint users. The catch here is Microsoft Outlook. If you are using Microsoft Exchange you will more than likely want Outlook as well to ensure full functionality. You could still purchase Outlook licensing only and go with OpenOffice for the rest of the Office suite. It’s still money saved.

Example 3 – DNS and Web Server

Open source operating systems run very well on old hardware and don’t require the system resources a Microsoft 2008 R2 server would cost. For this example let’s look at building a company web server and DNS server on an Ubuntu (Linux) platform vs. Microsoft operating system. This example applies to two customer projects we’ve run into recently where the budget is tight but business must move forward so alternative solutions are required. For one project we needed a tertiary DNS server. For the other a web server to host a new web site with light traffic. Let’s compare the two solutions we came up with.

   Windows-Based  Open Source (Linux | Ubuntu)
 Server  $3,000  $0 (recycled old server)
 Operating System License  $800  $0
 Services  $750  $750
     
 Total Cost  $4,550  $750

As you can see in the table above we not only achieved a significant savings (with open source) but we also achieved a win with our Green Initiative by reusing equipment rather than recycling.

The previous three examples showed ways in which open source can be effective at saving you money while completing business objectives. But use caution. Just as proprietary software has disadvantages so does open source. From my experience, the biggest area of concern when switching to open source is when savings on software licensing get diverted to services thus ending in a wash or worse yet, a loss.

Let’s take a look at the fourth example.

Example 4 – Backup/Disaster Recovery

Caught with a dwindling budget a media company is forced to look at alternatives for technology solutions. Backups are critical but aren’t being performed. If they go with proprietary software they will need $2,000 in Symantec Backup Exec software.  The other option is to go with a great open source product called Bacula. The decision maker compares $2,000 to $0 and goes with Bacula. Remember when I mentioned earlier to be careful that software costs get diverted to services? Well in this case this is what happened. The staff spent two weeks trying to figure out Bacula and ultimately had to call in a partner who knows Bacula. The time spent by the staff cost an estimated $4,000. Add in the $900 charged by the technology partner to properly configure Bacula and you have a total project cost of $4,900 with a net loss of $2,900. Bacula is a great software application but just like any software deployment use caution. In this case the staff felt they could learn the product without support but ultimately needed to contact a partner familiar with it. Had a system failure occurred in that two week window this could have been an even bigger loss.

So going back to the fisherman’s question…. I answer with confidence and a bit of caution “Yes. You can save money with open source. Just use caution in your decision and look at all the angles. Now hand me a worm so we can fish.”

More Information:

Open Source Initiative
http://www.opensource.org/

GIMP
http://www.gimp.org/

OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/

Ubuntu
http://www.ubuntu.com/

Bacula
http://www.bacula.org/

Filed Under: Open Source Tagged With: ,

Solving the Solarwinds SCP and SFTP Server Unhandled Exception Error

August 15, 2011 By Michael O'Coners Leave a Comment

 

If you’ve ever installed the Solarwinds SCP and SFTP server on a Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 server you may have encountered the Unhandled Exception error. After successfully installing the SCP server you may encounter this error when you click “OK” after modifying the SCP server configuration. Figure 1 shows the screen shot. This error applies to the Solarwinds SFTP/SCP version 1.0.0.15.

Figure 1.

You will also notice that when you test user authentication it fails and is unable to authenticate.

The fix to this is quite simple.

  1. Make sure the SCP server is not running.
  2. From the program menu in Windows 2008 R2 right click the “Solarwinds SFTP and SCP Server” and select “Properties”.
  3. Click the “Compatibility” tab
  4. Select the checkbox next to “Run this program in compatibility mode for” (Figure 2.)
  5. Select “Windows Server 2003 (Service Pack 1) (Figure 2.)
  6. Click OK
  7. Launch and test the Solarwinds SCP server. You should be fixed.

Figure 2.

What is SCP?

SCP (Secure Copy) is a network protocol which support file transfers between hosts on a network. SCP uses secure shell (SSH) for data transfer and utilizes the same mechanisms for authentication and confidentiality of the data in transit. SCP runs over TCP port 22 by default since it uses SSH.

More Information:

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_copy

Download Solarwinds Free SCP/SFTP server (top link)
http://www.solarwinds.com/search/scp-server-download.aspx

Windows-based WinSCP client
http://www.winscp.net

Microsoft Compatibility Features
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754992(WS.10).aspx

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How to Enable IMAP in Unity Connection 8

August 5, 2011 By Michael O'Coners 1 Comment

 

It took me several Unity Connection installs to remember where to enable IMAP. So for those of you out there who can remember IP addresses from five years ago but can’t recall a relatively simple location for enabling IMAP, this post is for you. I’ll keep it short and sweet.

IMAP access to Unity Connection’s mailstore is enabled through Class of Service. Class of Service is basically a group of permissions and features a user is allowed (or not allowed) to use. The Cisco Unified Presence Client, for example, is often configured to use this IMAP connection as shown in Figure 1. There are other uses for enabling IMAP but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

Figure 1.

 

In the example above the Voicemail user account is authenticated to Microsoft Active Directory (LDAP). I can’t stress enough how important it is to integrate all Cisco Unified Communications products with an LDAP source. It makes end user management far less complicated.

The following instructions apply to Unity Connection 8.5

So let’s get started.

Here are the shortcut instructions:

Unity Connection -> Class of Service -> select your Class of Service -> enable IMAP.

More detailed instructions:

Step 1:
Log in to your Unity Connection management interface.

Step 2:
Expand “Class of Service” then click “Class of Service” (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

 

Step 3:
Select your Class of Service you want to enable. For this example I’m selecting the default CoS applied to the “voicemailusertemplate” template (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

 

Step 4:
Check the “Allow Users to Access Voice Mail Using an IMAP Client and/or Single Inbox” along with desired allowances. I’ve chosen the default (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

 

Click Save.

Conclusion:
That’s all there is too it. If you have firewalls in between your IMAP clients and your Unity Connection servers ensure you open up IMAP.

Additional Information:

To determine which users are in a particular Class of Service go to “Class of Service” then click “Class of Service Membership”. As shown in Figure 5 select the Class of Service or find by user then click “Find”.

 Figure 5.

Configuring IMAP Settings in Unity Connection 8.x
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/connection/8x/administration/guide/8xcucsag175.html#wp1056156

System Administration Guide for Unity Connection 8.x
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/connection/8x/administration/guide/8xcucsagx.html

Filed Under: Cisco, Unity Connection Tagged With: , ,

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