Sugar on Blackberry - Get rid of BES/Exchange?

**SBSAdmin** · 2008-09-11, 03:09 PM

We currently run a Hosted Exchange system with BES - both as a hosted service.

We just recently migrated to SugarCRM from Salesforce (barely used - poorly implemented) and are trying to figure out the best way to integrate everything.

As I look more and more at this whole package, I'm wondering if we still need hosted exchange and BES. I am looking for some advice as to the best way to go about this decision.

Calendaring - This is where it gets tough. We use calendaring extensively and have schedulers for our sales reps. Our schedulers cannot sync outlook to sugar because they schedule for multiple people and use shared calendars, etc. I would LOVE to have them schedule directly in sugar... but that brings me to the following problem/concerns..

Is there any way to get sugar calender info to sync directly with the BLACKBERRY calender module, or do I have to use one of the other apps that create their own instance on the bberry?

If this is possible.. I believe I can eliminate BES at this point, and just use pop mail for them to sugar and have their bberries get the pop mail, and use sugar as their contact manager.

SO can I sync sugar data right to bberry calendar and contacts, or do I need to use an external app on the bberry? Also, what products would you recommend I look at to maybe resolve my issues.
Thanks!

**greenkoi** · 2009-01-25, 02:56 AM

I'd be interested in the answer to your question if you've found one.

Thanks in advance,

**JohnCarini** · 2009-04-03, 03:34 PM

There is a 3rd party product called the Mobile Edge for SugarCRM that does integration that provides SugarCRM on the BlackBerry - it also does a sync of Calendar and tasks and address book on the device. You can find it here - http://www.ienterprises.com/sugar-crm-mobile

In the interest of full disclosure - I work for the company that developed the product - iEnterprises, Inc.

**davehaertel** · 2010-01-22, 06:25 PM

I used the Mobile edge demo on my BB Storm and have to say that unfortunately I was really disappointed with it and more disappointed with the fact that I sent numerous requests for some basic integration help and never even got ONE response, not even an auto reply that said "hey we got your message". Anyway, that was last year so maybe they have made some upgrades.

A couple of options that immediately came to mind when dealing with Outlook integration was 1). Kinamu connector. It works really well for me, although the SOAP setup can be a bit tricky, once it's done, it works very well. 2). If calendars are your biggest source of concern on the BB, there's a Google calendar sync that works very well with a GMAIL calendar (credentials get entered into Sugar for the GMAIL account) and a PC client sync that works exceptionally well within Outlook. That would double sync your calendar in two locations, but there's also a BB app that will sync with a Google calendar straight away.

The only drawback to that second thought though is that all of your reps would need to create their own GMAIL account. My suggestion would be the Kinamu connector though, overall its Outlook sync and configuration is very impressive. http://www.sugarforge.org/projects/outlookconnect/

And, just to confuse things even more, another bonus to the GMAIL calendar suggestion is that is amazingly simple to share Google calendars with other GMAIL users and also the IMAP plugin for SugarCRM seems to work really well with the GMAIL IMAP servers.

Hope some of that resembled something helpful