By now it's become almost impossible not to have heard about the upcoming changes to Daylight Saving Time (DST) (yes, that's Saving, not Savings). If you're an IT pro, and especially if you're responsible for Exchange Server administration, you've probably reacted to all the news by reaching for the nearest bottle of Excedrin.
Not only does all this mean changes to the way Windows Server and Exchange Server operate, it also means changes to how scheduled events are stored in Exchange Server. Worse, the DST changes won't be automatically reflected in users' calendars -- they have to be adjusted manually.
The changes will most specifically affect anything that's been scheduled to fall between March 11, 2007 to April 1, 2007 and October 28, 2007 to November 4, 2007. (Of course, this doesn't count changes to events that have been scheduled for future years.)
Microsoft's response to this whole situation has been somewhat scattershot, since there's really no one utility a person can download to fix everything at once. Redmond's approach has been to deal with the problem in three discrete ways: the operating system level, the individual product level, and the application data level.
To that end, Microsoft has put together a Web page, Preparing for Daylight Saving Time changes in 2007, where it documents these issues. It's worth reading from top to bottom -- even if the level of detail may make your eyes glaze over!
While I can't spare you the trouble of having to read the document for yourself, here is a synopsis of the important issues as they pertain to Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook.
The operating system level
The most important way the DST changes affect Windows itself is in the changes to the time zone definitions supplied with the operating system (OS). Windows Vista has already shipped with the appropriate changes, but Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 (as well as several ot
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her Windows-derived products) all need to be updated.
These changes have been published as updates for Windows, as described in Knowledge Base article 931836, February 2007 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems. (The update also includes rollups for many other individual time-zone update issues released previously.)
Some things to keep in mind:
The application level and the data level
Many individual products are affected by the DST change. But for the sake of this tip, we'll deal with the two most important ones to Exchange Server administrators: Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook.
In most every case, you'll need to apply the update for Daylight Saving Time changes in 2007 for Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2, which addresses the way Exchange Server handles time zones.
But what about Microsoft Outlook appointments that fall within the affected time zones? There are two basic ways to handle that problem: fix it through Exchange Server administratively or let users fix it through Microsoft Outlook.
To make the changes through Exchange Server, Microsoft produced the Exchange Calendar Update Tool to automatically fix affected appointments across a whole organization. However, the Exchange Calendar Update (ECU) tool also has some quirks (shilling for bugs) of its own that you need to be area of:
The other approach to fixing calendar data is to let users make changes to their own calendars through the Outlook Time Zone Update Tool. This works best when you have a small and technically savvy set of users who can get hands-on guidance for how to use the tool, since it allows for much more selective changes to be made.
This approach also works best for people who have portable devices that will also need to have their calendars patched.
Finally, those who have started to deploy Outlook 2007 don't need to use the Outlook Time Zone Update Tool to make these changes, but the tool does grant more flexibility in making the changes than Outlook2007 itself.
DST via virtual machine
If you don't want to run the Exchange Calendar Update Tool on an existing machine, Microsoft has a slick workaround. You can download a virtual machine for the Microsoft Calendar Update Tool.
It contains an instance of Windows Server 2003, onto which you can install Microsoft Outlook and then run the Exchange Calendar Update Tool. (I haven't confirmed this, but I suspect the installed copy of Microsoft Outlook does not need to be activated to run the tool properly, so you can save yourself a desktop license.)
Note that the virtual machine will need to be formally joined to the domain before you can run the changes; and, you'll need to be running Virtual PC or Virtual Server somewhere in order for this to work.
Conclusion
There are few ways to anticipate a change this broad, even though the changes have been at least a year or more in the offing. One of the most important guidelines to follow when applying these fixes is to apply them all, top-to-bottom, in the shortest possible span of time.
In other words, do them all at once -- OS, application and data, in that order -- or not at all. Otherwise, you'll be facing even greater problems introduced due to mismatches between the operating system's time-zone data and the time-zone information in Exchange Server's appointments, and so on.
Do you have comments on this tip? Let us know.
About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of Windows Insight, a newsletter devoted to hints, tips, tricks, news and goodies for all flavors of Windows users.
Related information from SearchExchange.com:
Article: IT jitters grow as DST deadline nears
Tip: Fixing corrupt Microsoft Outlook calendar entries
Tip: OWA and Outlook calendar discrepancies
Reference Center: Exchange and Outlook contact and calendar administration
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