One DST patch angle you may not have thought of...
The Daylight Saving Time patch seems to be all everyone is talking about these days. How to deploy, what to deploy, how to cover computers that aren’t supported by the patch, etc., etc. Well, something interesting came across my desk today that you should be aware of, and treated as a warning. The DST patch is ALL about timing. Here’s what I mean…
As soon as this patch is deployed, all MS Outlook and Exchange calendar entries in the DST delta period are going to be off by an hour. The tools for Outlook and Exchange are still being developed and are required to tackle the DST issue.
*Note for Outlook 2000-2003 users* It is very important that the window of time between applying the Operating System patch on the client machines AND running the Outlook/Exchange rebasing tool is minimized. This is due to the fact that Outlook versions prior to Outlook 2007 do not stamp single-instance appointments with the necessary time zone property. For these items, the Outlook Time Zone Update Tool will add the time zone property and adjust them by an hour (if they are within the delta periods of 3/11-4/1 or 10/28-11/4). If an item is created by Outlook 2000-2003 before the OS is patched, then they will be adjusted properly once the tool is run. If an item is created by Outlook 2000-2003 AFTER the OS is patched using the DST 2007 rules, then they will appear at the correct time. However, the tool will improperly adjust them by an hour when it is run.
The rebasing tool will probably not be available until early February.
Incidentally, a massive update for the OS workaround KB article was posted today which will be of great interest to any of you who are attempting to use the manual workaround on the OS’s that are in extended/custom support like NT4 and W2k. That KB article is here:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=914387
Microsoft’s main public DST web page contains information here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx