02.07.07
Y2K7 pt. 2
I’m getting a better understand of the Daylight Savings Time issues. There are a couple tools available to deal with the problem. First is a Microsoft Windows XP patch. This patch will update DST on your workstation. I installed it Monday and haven’t had any problems with it. There is also a patch for Windows servers which really should be applied before clients get updated. In an exchange environment the next step is to update Exchange server software. This should happen after Windows is patched on both server and clients.
Patching Windows should prevent new Outlook calendar entries from being messed up, but you still have to deal with ones you have already created (both recurring and individual). Microsoft has released an Office Time Zone Update tool to update existing dates. The problem with this tool is that it can’t tell if individual Outlook (pre-Outlook 2007) calendar entries have been updated already. There is not time zone information on these entries so the tool has no way to tell if they need to be moved an hour or not. Recurring meetings have time zone information and should be correctly updated by the tool. The tool has the option to update both meeting types, or just recurring meetings. Microsoft is urging caution when using the tool to update single instance meetings. Particularly individual meetings created after Windows is patched, but before the server is patched will likely be moved an hour too far if updated by the time zone update tool.
To summarize, here is the suggested update order:
- Patch server OS
- Patch Desktop OS
- Update Exchange (CDO)
- Run TZMOVE to update meetings
- Options:
- Meeting Type
- Recurring & individual meetings
- Recurring meetings only
- Update Point
- Centrally/Server
- Locally/Client/Individually
- Meeting Type
- Options:
On the smart phone front it looks like an update will be available February 12th. Verizon told me that the system time is updated by the network and no software update is needed, but I don’t think I believe that.
I’ll update as more information becomes available.