Managing BlackBerry Configuration Settings Remotely - Part One

Much of the configuration of BlackBerry devices can be controlled through IT Policy options, especially those having to do with security. However there are many more configuration options available on the device that don't have IT Policy correlates. In these cases it can be difficult to control the user experience or to enforce standard organizational settings.

There are a few options to automate the configuration of these device settings:

1) Configure a BlackBerry with your custom settings, then back it up to a .IPD file. For each new BlackBerry deployed, restore the .IPD file before activation.

2) Configure a BlackBerry with your custom settings, then assign it to the new user's account. Then activate a new BlackBerry against the same account, which will inherit the device configuration settings from the old device.

These options can set an initial standard, however they cannot be changed remotely or locked down and enforced over time. The BlackBerry device user will have the ability to modify these settings and break the standard.

The fact that option #2 above exists tells us that the device configuration settings are stored within the BES environment, as that is how swapping in brand new device for a user can inherit all the old device's settings. Unfortunately the location of these settings is not easily accessible to the BES Administrator, as this function was really only designed for backup and restoration purposes.

However... if we can figure out where these settings are stored perhaps we can modify them somehow from the back end, and push them down to the device. We know that most configuration information is stored in the central SQL database, so this is where the configuration must be stored as well.

Peeking around my test environment I discovered a table in the database called SyncBackupRestore. It appears that much of the device's configuration settings are stored in this table. In the next post we will dig deeper into this table to discover what it holds and how perhaps we can modify it and push the changes to a remote BlackBerry.