I have a customer which wants to send out BB's like workstations deployed and imaged with Ghost. That being said, they just want to lock down the desktop so that users cannot change themes or move icons around. It makes sense from a Helpdesk point of view to have a set template to work with but I have never seen any SW that will lock down a device in that manner. I suggested they disallow 3rd party apps so that users cannot install new themes and let them know that users can move, hide or create folders to move icons around.

Let me know if you have heard of any app that can do this.

I've never seen any third party software to do what you're looking to do.
I've also never seen a good enough business reason for doing it.

I'm all for consistency from a support perspective... but locking down the handheld in this manner just seems counterproductive and unnecessary.

__________________

I agree. I asked our RIM rep just to be sure. Our client is making a big deal about it from a support point of view but we convinced them to make sure their staff is up to date on how to use a BB so they can distinguish and guide the users to where they need to go! Thanks.

Supposedly coming in the future, you will have the ability to set device preferences, such as homescreen layout, and lock this down to prevent changes. This will be part of the broad range of topics covering device deployment, standardization, etc., so expect everything from icon layouts to themes and everything in between. This was mentioned more than once at WES and I actually agree with your client and this capability within some industries.

With that said, it's not currently available and I doubt we'll see anything in the next year (who knows, though). I would see this requiring updates on both the BES and device before it could happen, though.

__________________
BCSA (4.1, 5.0) | BCSD (4.1, 5.0)

The views expressed by me on Port3101.org are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

What I did was create an application to deploy the BlackBerry simulators to our help desk. The application itself is only a couple megs in size. The individual simulators are downloaded to the workstation on demand. Plus there are lots of pretty pictures in our internal knowledge base. The frustrating part is that they only help a few people. The rest claim ignorance and simply escalate tickets.