Your PDA may support the entry of 'owner' details e.g. your own personal details. The Blackberry does - see examples below using a Blackberry Curve 8320. If you enter these details, then when the BB powers up it displays a screen with the owner details. You can adjust these details to include the information we need to recover your PDA for you.

If you enter the owner information below:	Then this screen appears when the BB is switched on:
You can also include some personal information - an employee name or employee number. We can ask for this information when we recover your PDA - so you know immediately who has lost it. See below.
The amount of text (lines and words per line) available for display on the BB screen varies with the BB model. The examples above show the minimum useful text for RecoverPDA to work. You can have more text if your BBs allow that.

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Owner details can be set centrally on your BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server). You can also set policies that determine if owner details can be set a) on BES only, b) on the BB only, c) on both BES and the BB. The screens below show setup using BES version 4.1.4.15.

Step One. The first step is to select the user to whom you want to assign owner/ details. Ensure that the BB status for that user is "Running" and that the BB has recently contacted the server.

Step Two. The procedure to lock the handheld is a two step approach. You will set a password on the device and set the owner information, then enable a policy which automatically locks the Blackberry after a specific time. The first step is to set the password and owner information. You can do both of these within the same window. If you scroll down to "IT Admin" and open it up, you will see an option to "Set Password and Lock Handheld".

Remember that on this screen you will need to tick the "Set Owner Information also" box so that you can add the information into the spaces.

Step Three. You create and amend a policy to lock the Blackberry device after a specific time. You can also lock the text so that the Blackberry options can not be changed. First you will need to go up to the "BlackBerry Domain" level on the Explorer View, and click on "Edit Properties".

Next you will need to click on "IT Policy", which will bring up the "IT Policy Administration" section. Clicking on "IT Policies" will being up a button on the right hand side with "..." as its value. Click on this button.

Then you will need to click on "New" to create a new policy. - If you have policies already, you can go to the "Properties" of this, and make the changes you require.

If you are creating a new policy, then you will first need to set the Policy Name.

Next you will need to click on the section called "Common Policy Group", and at the top you will have the section to "Lock Owner Info" -- This will lock out the device from being able to amend the text that you sent to it from above. You are able to change the text, by going through the same steps as above.

Next is the main part, you will need to set a password timeout on the policy so that the BB will lock itself, and switch on the screensaver text. To do this you will need to go to "Password Policy Group" and change the first option "Set Password Timeout". In the example this is set to 1 minute. You can have any value you like.

Once you have clicked OK, and returned back to the Blackberry Manager, you will need to assign this policy to your user. Return to the user list, and select the user you wish to enable this policy on. Head back to "IT Admin" and click on "Assign IT Policy".

Select the policy you have just created.

This message notifies you that the policy has been sent to the device. The device will then make the changes on the BB. The owner information and lock out have now been set.