USING LOOKUPS ON BES

Lookups are a special feature available to users who are configured to use a corporate email server using the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). Lookups allow you to enter search criteria that will search the Global Address List (GAL) on the email server and return the matches to your handheld. From here, you can look at the results and work with the addresses in the lookup just like they were part of your Address Book on your handheld. Lookups are not permanent, however. If your handheld is reset, all lookups are lost.

CREATING A LOOKUP

If the feature is available to you, there will be a Lookup menu item available from the Address List screen. Clicking this menu item shows a small dialog where you can enter the search criteria to be used in this lookup. Click the trackwheel to dismiss the dialog.

Once a lookup has been created, it is displayed in the Address List with square brackets around it. The text of the entry changes to reflect the state of the lookup. For this example, let's say you entered the character K in the Lookup dialog. At first it will display [Looking up: K] while the lookup is sent to and resolved on the email server. Once the lookup results are returned, the entry will display [No Matches: K] if there were no matches, [2 Matches: K] if there were two matches, or [Name] if there is only one match.

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Because the lookup needs to be resolved on the email server, you must be in your wireless coverage area to create a lookup.

VIEWING LOOKUP RESULTS

Once a lookup is resolved, you can view the results by scrolling to Lookup and clicking the View Lookup menu item. This will display another Address List screen that contains just the results of the lookup. This list has many of the same features that the main Address list does, including Search, View, and Edit menu items and the appropriate Call Name, Email Name, SMS Name, and PIN Name menu items to contact that person. There are also several menu items enabling you to manage the lookup.

ADDING LOOKUP RESULTS TO THE ADDRESS BOOK

One of the most common things you will want to do is permanently add an address returned by the lookup to your Address Book. You can do this by clicking the Add menu item. When this is done, the address that was selected is copied into your Address Book and then deleted from the lookup results. If that was the only entry in the results, the lookup is automatically deleted and you will be shown the Address List screen again. If you want to add all of the matches, click the Add All menu item. This will also delete the lookup and return you to the Address List screen.

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The Edit menu will allow you to modify and save changes to an entry returned in the Lookup. However, these changes are not returned to the email server and if the lookup is deleted, these changes will be lost.

MANAGING LOOKUP RESULTS

Sometimes the results returned by a lookup are larger than you want because the search criteria are applied to the First Name, Last Name, and Company fields. You can modify the search criteria and resubmit the lookup by clicking the Lookup menu item in the View Lookup screen. This is basically the same procedure as deleting the current lookup and creating a new one based on the new search criteria.

If there are just a few entries in the lookup that you don't want, you can select them individually and click the Delete menu item to remove them. This just removes them from the current lookup results and doesn't modify other lookup results or your main Address Book.

DELETING A LOOKUP

Once you are done with a lookup, you can remove it with the Delete Lookup menu item from either the Address List screen or the View Lookup screen.

RESOLVING A LOOKUP

One menu item on the View Lookup screen that may not be obvious is the Resolve menu item. I know when I saw it, I didn't know what it meant or would do. It's really quite simple, however. When a lookup has more then one match, the Address List screen is unable to show the Call Name, Email Name, and other menu items to contact a person because the lookup contains more than one entry. Resolving a lookup is simply selecting one entry from the lookup results to use for this purpose. Resolved lookups change the entry in the Address list from [Matches: 2] to [Name]. When a lookup that has been resolved is selected on the Address List screen, it is treated like the address that it was resolved to. For example, if a lookup is resolved to John Smith, then selecting the lookup in the Address List screen results in all of the menu items being enabled as if the entry for John Smith were selected. Of course, you can still click the View Lookup menu item to open up the lookup as before.