Using BlackBerry Work Drives

I have to admit: some weeks ago I never have heard about BlackBerry Work Drives 😉

I also wasn’t aware that there are Applications available from BlackBerry World running only in the work perimeter – so you need BlackBerry Balance and BES 10 to use them.

As a developer you should know about BlackBerry Work Drives – it’s really cool: imagine shared network drives from your Enterprise Server being available on your BlackBerry 10 Devices like normal shared files. That’s what BlackBerry Work Drives will give you. For FREE 🙂

Searching in the BlackBerry World for ‘BlackBerry Work Drives’ you’ll find this application:

It’s a good idea to copy the URL – we’ll need this one soon.

Add Application from BlackBerry World

I already have explained how you can add applications to your BES 10. See this article here.

You should read this article to understand HowTo add and publish applications. Now we’re doing the same for public BlackBerry World Applications. To add the application please copy in the URL:

As next we have to publish the app to your BES 10:

Now it’s the same workflow as described for the internal applications. Manage your Software Configuration:

and save it:

Prepare Shared Network Drive for BlackBerry Work Drives

As usual share your network drive on your Enterprise Server.

Remember: don’t use the shared network drive we added for internal App – Management !

As next add all the users who should be able to use files from this shared network drive and give all permissions to read / write.

Attention: You need a special permission to allow the user to use these shared network drives local on their BlackBerry 10 devices  !

As first users should be added to a user group – in this example it’s the bb10users group.

Here’s HowTo set the permission:

Open the Group Policy Management Editor on your server, then go to Policies | Windows Settings | Security Settings | Local Policies | User Rights

and set the permission ‘Allow log on locally’ for this user group.

Thats it on the server side

BlackBerry World Apps on the Device

Open BlackBerry World – Work:

There are three Tabs to manage the applications in your work perimeter: Search for internal Apps, Public Apps and take a look at ‘My World’ to get an overview. From Public you’ll find the BlackBerry Work Drives to download. This looks similar to the BlackBerry World in your private perimeter.

Download the app !

Map Shared Drives from Enterprise to BlackBerry 10

Now you can Open  BlackBerry Work Drives and map your shared network drive to a local one. Use a name you like and enter the credentials and pathes from your server:

Now you can use your work drives same way as local drives. BlackBerry 10 does all to synchronize the data.

You can think about this as your own Secure DropBox 😉

Here you can see how all is integrated:

Top Left: File Manager from Work Perimeter gives access to Device (Work) and BlackBerry Work Drives

Top Right: File Manager from Private Perimeter gives access to Device (Private), SD Card and Cloud (DropBox, Box)

Bottom Left: BlackBerry Work Drives are managing the Mapping between Enterprise Server and local Device.

BlackBerry Work Drives from a Developers POV

Files from BlackBerry Work Drives behave like Dropbox or Box and you cann access them as /shared.

So in our sample /shared/ekkesServerDrive would be the correct path to read from or to write to shared network drives on your enterprise server.

Isn’t that easy ?

But attention: if you’re working with full path names – there will be append ‘-enterprise’ to the account path. If you’re not aware of this perhaps an app can be broken using BlackBerry Work Drives . You can read about here in this article.