BES Logs ... What's in them? Part 14 of 20 (PhoneCall/PIN/SMS logs)
Posted 07-09-2009 at 04:00 AM by hdawg
Tags bes log, blackberry logs, blackberry phone log, blackberry pin log, blackberry server logs, blackberry sms log, blackberry sync service, phone log, phonecall log, pin log, sms log, sync service, synchronization log
Welcome to Part 14 of the 20 part series looking at the BES logs (Part 13) ... the BlackBerry Phone / SMS / PIN logs.
If you're still running BES 4.0.x or older you've got no idea about these ... you need to look at upgrading anyway!
The PhoneCall/PIN/SMS logs (named below) are all a function of the BlackBerry Synchronization Service.
Enabling/Disabling of these logs are controlled via IT Policy assignment.
All of the logs are comma delimited with data encapsulated in double quotes.
There's nothing magical or special about them ... they get fed their data through the BlackBerry Synchronization Service; if PIN and SMS logging are enabled they also become a part of Automatic Wireless Backup.
To view their data open up with your favorite text editor or Excel ... they're just plain text.
The problem with these logs is that if you attempt to open one with Excel, you'll notice Excel doesn't automatically parse the contents; SUPER ANNOYING.
There is however a quick solution:
If you've got any questions about other specific entries in the PhoneCall / PIN / SMS logs feel free to post a question / comment in response to this post, or in the forum.
Tomorrow in Part 15 we'll start down the home stretch of this series and will hit the first of a few BlackBerry Resource Kit (BRK) tools that I use on a regular basis, OutOfCoverage.exe ... see if you can guess what it does
If you're still running BES 4.0.x or older you've got no idea about these ... you need to look at upgrading anyway!
The PhoneCall/PIN/SMS logs (named below) are all a function of the BlackBerry Synchronization Service.
- PhoneCallLog_20090601.CSV
- PINLog_20090601.CSV
- SMSLog_20090601.CSV
Enabling/Disabling of these logs are controlled via IT Policy assignment.
- PIM Synchronization > Disable Phone Call Log Wireless Synchronization
- PIM Synchronization > Disable PIN Messages Wireless Synchronization
- PIM Synchronization > Disable SMS Messages Wireless Sync
All of the logs are comma delimited with data encapsulated in double quotes.
There's nothing magical or special about them ... they get fed their data through the BlackBerry Synchronization Service; if PIN and SMS logging are enabled they also become a part of Automatic Wireless Backup.
To view their data open up with your favorite text editor or Excel ... they're just plain text.
The problem with these logs is that if you attempt to open one with Excel, you'll notice Excel doesn't automatically parse the contents; SUPER ANNOYING.
There is however a quick solution:
- Open the CSV file with notepad
- Click File > Save As ...
- Change Encoding from Unicode to ANSI
- Click Save and Click Yes on the dialog box to replace the file
If you've got any questions about other specific entries in the PhoneCall / PIN / SMS logs feel free to post a question / comment in response to this post, or in the forum.
Tomorrow in Part 15 we'll start down the home stretch of this series and will hit the first of a few BlackBerry Resource Kit (BRK) tools that I use on a regular basis, OutOfCoverage.exe ... see if you can guess what it does
Total Comments 3
Comments
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One thing about these to remember is that if you share out your log file directory on your BES servers like I do, remember to lock down the security on the share so "Everyone" can't access the phone call logs of all BES users...Posted 07-09-2009 at 09:39 AM by mahoward
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omg, i have been searching for this info for more than 3 days.
great work.
just one question, is it possible to remotely access the "PhoneCallLog_YYYYMMDD.CSV" file from an external server.
thanks a million
morganPosted 02-06-2011 at 10:52 PM by qwedcvfr123
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yes; just need to change the location of where you keep the logs.Posted 02-07-2011 at 07:24 AM by hdawg
