Address Book Contact Labels and the BlackBerry

Had an interesting issue crop up today with an end user who changed the contact labels associated with an address book entry. Here is the default when you click the Edit Contact Labels button within your address book entry form:


This person had modified the labels to reflect different information, for example changing the Pager label to Home Phone #2. The problem is that the label change does not sync over to the BlackBerry, which shows the Label still listed under Pager.

I called RIM and verified this is the way it should work, as the underlying field name does not change, and RIM maps to the field name, and not the changeable display name.

I understand the issue and agree with RIM's assessment, however this is one of those gray areas where it is difficult to determine who is responsible for the issue. Is it Lotus for providing the (perhaps unwise) ability to change display names to something that is completely different from what the underlying field name reflects? Or is it RIM for not supporting this Lotus Notes feature, even though it may not be the best of features to have from a data integrity standpoint.

As is generally the case, it is perhaps a little of both, which is why these things tend not to get fixed as each side points to the other and neither will take the responsibility to address it.

This is not that big of a deal to me, and personally I agree with RIM's assessment that their sync engine should map to the field name and not a nebulous display name that can be changed at will by the end user.

However, this is just a small example of the types of conflicts that can happen when you have two separate software entities interacting with each other, creating a no-man's land of responsibility with the customer trapped in the middle.