A few problems running the BB client

• I can now see my projects in client version 1.2, but when I click on the project, I get “Retrieving task list” and that’s it. It never goes beyond that (left it there for couple of minutes), BB is still working (e.g. Back button takes me back to the project list)
• When I create a new project on BB and then use the “email to task” feature, the newly created project is not available (BTW the way you select projects in email2task is not very user friendly)
• When I create a new task in My Agenda, I can’t select a project the task belongs to (I may be missing something here)
• When I closed a task in My Agenda and saved it, I got NullPointerException
• When I created a new task in a project, a red star appeared next to a project name after a while and the BB started flashing red (is there a documentation for the BB client?). The task did not show up in the list (still showing “retrieving task list, see above). As the client crashed shortly after (see previous item), my BB was flashing red indefinitely, I had to reboot.
  I’d like to continue testing, but I only have 4 more starts left. But right now, I can’t see myself or the company spending $25 on it (which is a shame as it seems really interesting and I was testing to see if we should get the dedicated Mentat server)
  Any questions, please feel free to email me (is there an RSS feed on the forums? ;-)
  One more quesiton – can you make “formatting help” available for people who post a new topic? It only seems to be visible next to the “reply” form on the forums web…

Just spotted the RSS and the “watch topic” feature, pls ignore that :)

• If the client hangs at the “Retrieving Tasks” page, there is probably an issue with your network connection. You might want to check your data connection or try using the browser to see if you have a stable internet connection.
  
• If you create a project from the BB then immediately try to add a task to it from email, the new project does not show up. Good catch on this one! We will get that fixed ASAP.
  
• I tested creating a task in My Agenda here on the 8800 and was able to successfully choose projects & confirm the new task showing up. Let me know how this goes after your clean reinstall.
  We are aware of the imperfect interface for the email to task project selector and have that on our list of things to improve. Accomodating older BlackBerrys is the issue.
  
• I closed several tasks in the Agenda on the 8800 and did not encounter any errors. I am not sure what you mean by “saved it” but you can usually just hit the escape key after you set a status or finish any task editing and it will be already be saved automatically. If you continue to see this error after a clean reinstall, please let us know the details.
  
• The red star appears when you have a new task, either assigned to you or generated by converting an email to a task. It’s meant as a reminder and to help you find the new task, like a trail of breadcrumbs (it’s project will also show as red, and there is a red star next to the task itself). These new tasks also show up in My Agenda, so you can go there to deal with them all if you prefer one stop organizing. You can set up an audio alert for these too, if you are going to be getting tasks from others. Once you have viewed all the new tasks, the red icons all go away. What you describe here may be related to network issue as well.
• However, if you create a new task for yourself in Mentat you should not see the red icon. I did not see any errors or crashes testing on the 8800 with the latest build here, but we will be watching for any issues here. Thanks for the heads up.
  I hope that helps. Most of these problems should vanish with a good network connection and a clean reinstall of the latest Mentat BlackBerry Client. We’ll iron out the BB project creation & email to task selector bug next.
  Keep in touch,
  Erik

Thanks for the prompt reply!
I’ve reinstalled the client as suggested. I also rebooted my BB just to get rid of anything that could be cached in memory.
The result is that I can’t use the client at all now. I’m getting an error message at the first page (registration code) and then on second login page (username and password). That’s the end of the road for me.
The error is: net.rim.device.api.io.IOCancelledException: Connection closed while logging on
I’m in a corporate environment, but my connection works fine for everything else (browser, etc.) Network coverage is excellent so that’s not an issue :)
The error appears regardless of my browser setting (BlackBerry browser vs. Internet browser) – I tried this just in case…
I noticed that some other software packaged do test different types of connection, while the Mentat client probably assumes that the default connection type is working.
Is there something else I can test / debug? I’m happy to change some settings on my BB if it helps you to diagnose the problem.

• 1 On the main screen of your BlackBerry smartphone, select the Options or Settings icon. 
  (The icon name depends on the BlackBerry model.)
• 2 Select Firewall. (Security Options then Firewall)
• 3 Select Reset Settings. (click on Enabled & choose that option)
  This should prompt you with whether or not you want to allow the connection next time you start Mentat (if it’s already running exit it from the menu then start again). Be sure to allow all connections.

• Contact your carrier and check if you 
  are able to use their APN. 
• If you are already using the APN, check with your carrier that your Internet APN settings 
  are correct. 
• On the BlackBerry, you can enter or modify Internet APN settings by selecting 
  TCP on the Options menu.
  The error you are seeing now is different though, I realize. Yours sounds like a pretty unique case, but we would like to get Mentat working for you. Let me know if any of those solutions work out.

We just deployed an updated version of Mentat BlackBerry to http://brainmurmurs.com/products/mentat/v42/Men…
if you want to try that install link from your BlackBerry browser.

Thanks, I’ll check it out. I actually tested what you wrote before, just have not found time to summarize the findings :( I’ll let you know how the new version behaved…

Thank you

Hi, sorry for lack of responses – I was busy for a few weeks :(
I just downloaded client v1.3 and can see lots of improvements, thanks for the progress. However, my main problem still persists. When I click on a project, the client gets stuck in “Retrieving Project Tasks” state. I can see BB “data transfer” arrows for a brief moment and that’s it – the screen does not change.
I am able to create a new task in My Agenda and the tasks does appear on the website, so general connectivity does not seem to be an issue.
Is there any way I can debug this problem?
Thanks!

JirkaV,
Please send me your IM contact info via the support form. I would be happy to go over the server logs while you try this to see if there’s something funky happening on the server side.
Obviously, we are not seeing the same problem ourselves, or we wouldn’t have released the build yet.
Anyway, drop me a line and we’ll get to the bottom of this.

-Daniel

Erik F. valiantly trudged through the process with me of troubleshooting an OTA download error (“Download failed.” -> “Error Code 907 – Invalid COD - Cannot import ZIP file”) on my BB Curve 8320 (BIS on T-Mobile).
We got around it by a special request to make an .alx file available, which I was able to sync over using the Desktop Manager.
However, I’m still unable to pull down the latest update to the BB client OTA. Searches of other forums on the 907 error are of little use, as the solutions seem to be application-specific.
I’ve already got my carrier’s APN address and login credentials set correctly on my BB (in the TCP menu), and the problem persists on every Wi-Fi network I’ve used to try to download the file.
I can’t imagine this problem is specific to my BB, since it seems to occur with several other third-party apps downloaded OTA. Any further guidance/help that BMI can offer is appreciated!
Alternatively, making an .alx version of future revisions available for download would be GREAT.
Matt

Sorry – just to clarify my earlier post: I don’t encounter this error when trying to download any other apps…what I meant was that lots of BB users have reported “907” errors with OTA downloads of apps other than Mentat, on a variety of carriers, etc. (as evidenced by a google search on the error code), but no one seems to have come up with a solid, widely-applicable fix.

Hi all.
Mentat’s OTA really seems to have a glitch. The download failed is detailed on my BB as a 907_Invalid_COD_HTTP_Error_500:_Internal_Server_Error. It would really be nice to have a response on this. I have not yet had any problems with other OTA’s.
rkay

Hello folks,
This is clearly a mixed bag – a lot of people are able to do the OTA install without any problems, but we are seeing a sizable fraction experiencing this error.
As was pointed out earlier, this isn’t limited to the Mentat OTA, either. My suspicion is that there is a configuration issue we need to address in order to support all of our users.
We’re actively trying to figure out what is going on. With luck I will have an answer by Monday.
-Daniel

So, I’ve found a few possible causes for the problem here.
Most of the cases are probably exonerated by the fact that there are a lot of people that can correctly do the OTA install.
I’ve also seen it suggested that you can get this error if you’re attempting to do the OTA install with something other than the standard BlackBerry browser. Make sure, in the top line of your browser -> options page it says “blackberry browser” and nothing else.

Thanks Dan.
I can confirm that I have used no other browser than the standard BB browser. I’d actually seen the page you reference from BlackBerry—please note that the 907 doesn’t always cite “Invalid JAR” as the error (as two of us have noted here).
Also, to a non-programmer like me, the solutions described don’t seem to point to actions that the end user can take to fix the issue, but rather the developer/server administrator (IMHO).
An answer akin to “Other people can do it without a problem” doesn’t seem sufficient to justify dropping the issue, so I presume that’s not the spirit in which your most recent post was written. I’ll watch for further updates (unless someone there posts something to the effect that you AREN’T going to look at it any further).
Thank you!

mjmason – you got the gist right, I was just ticking through the facts as we can see them, not dismissing the problem.
The only thing that the user could do as a defensive measure that was listed in the possible solutions was use the anointed RIM BlackBerry browser. I’ve seen stranger things in this line of work, so it was also worth looking at.
The next step is to verify our own information, which we will start doing now.
-Daniel

Hi Dan,
I sent you my details via the support form on Feb 15 as suggested, still waiting for reply. Have you received it?
Cheers
JirkaV

Hi guys,
I’ve been looking into this and we are indeed experiencing some current problems with the OTA downloads.
I just wanted to let you know that we are working on fixing it right now. It’s important to us to get it working for everyone. We’ll keep you posted when we get it done or have more information.

Here are desktop download links to try if you have a Desktop Manager installed on your computer.
*OS 4.2 Download
http://brainmurmurs.com/products/mentat/v42desk…
*OS 4.1 Download
http://brainmurmurs.com/products/mentat/v41desk…
That might help solve the troubles you are seeing. If you can, try a desktop install and let us know how it goes, that would be great.
We’ll keep working on getting those OTA links hammered into shape too.

The Mentat BlackBerry OTA download links are working again. Turned out that RIM had it set up to secretly split the extremely important .cod file into pieces once it reaches a certain size and then disguise it after building. After discovering this hidden gem of arcane knowledge, we devised a solution.
We’ve tested the download links on all our BlackBerry models here and Mentat is installing with no problems now.
Give them a try if you can, and let us know how it goes.
Erik

Success!
Didn’t even have the chance to try the desktop files (but I appreciate your making them available)—the OTA went in smoothly after an uninstall of the previous version.
Sorry to have been the problem child, guys. Looking forward to toying with v1.4 now that it’s running happily on my Curve.
Matt

Great!
We’re glad you are all set and look forward to your experiences.
Erik

Am I the only one who can no longer surf to the mentat site on my blackberry? I now consistently get 413 (request entity too large) when accessing gomentat.com
I’m encountering a number of issues with the BB client itself (version 1.4) – everything from null pointer exceptions to not being able to create tasks in low signal areas, so wanted to be sure I had the current version before complaining further….