Warning - Is The Daylight Savings Time The New Y2K?

Mitzs · Feb 7, 2007

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I don't know if this will affect you guys across the pond or not. However, if anyone come across something, that might be helpfull please post it and I will post it over at TU and Mworld if you don't have a account over there. Thanks everyone.

I don't know why I never thought of this on my own, except that there has not been a lot of hype about it... Today a customer asked me if there were any patches that had to be installed on the NetWare server related to the daylight savings time changes. I did a little research and went ! Why didn't I look at this before????

For those of you that may not know, the United States has decided to change when daylight savings time occurs starting this year.

Quote:
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that DST will start on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November. In 2007, the start and stop dates will be March 11 and November 4, respectively. These dates are different from previous DST start and stop dates. In 2006, the dates were the first Sunday in April (April 2, 2006) and the last Sunday in October (October 29, 2006).
Some countries are still evaluating whether they will adopt the new rules for themselves. You should anticipate more changes in DST and time zone rules for countries that typically align with U.S. DST rules.

I'm sure that everyone who needs to be aware of this change is, and I know that on some boards this issue has been presented. What you may not be aware of is how far reaching the consequences of not applying the appropriate patches can be.

I have found sites that talk about server patches and how it will affect Java apps but I haven't come across much to indicate that admins are aware of how this will affect their end users if they are using calendaring. It doesn't matter if they are using GroupWise, Exchange or Lotus Notes or any other messaging systems if the client they use is on a Windows desktop.

When a user makes an appointment through most messaging/collaboration client, the time of the appointment is converted to UTC time and stored in the messaging system. It is then converted back to the local time in the user's client when they view the message. So far so good. This allows for changes in time zones for traveling users so it makes sense.

Here is the problem... This process uses the local machine's calendar and clock to do the conversion. Because of this, an unpatched workstation will use the old daylight savings time which started the first Sunday of April and ended the last Sunday of October.

Patched workstations will use the new daylight savings time which starts the second Sunday of March and ends the first Sunday of November. That's an extra four weeks!

No problem, the Windows workstations are all configured to do automatic updates and except for the odd recurring appointment it will be a non issue right? Wrong... Its not a mandatory update! Its an optional update. It may be possible that some users have updated and some haven't. That is going to confuse the issue even more.

There are supposed to be tools out there that will help with this problem but there is no way that they can catch everything. They are not going to save your users any time simply because they will still have to check 100% of their appointments even if it catches 80% of them. Its impossible for a tool to know whether the user created an appointment on a patched or unpatched workstation. Even if you strictly control updates at the office, if the user is able to access their accounts from home that could throw everything off.

Its important to ensure that you get all of your Windows machines updated with the "optional" daylight savings time patch as soon as possible and warn your users that they will need to check all of the appointments on their calendars for the 4 weeks in question. Imagine what will happen if one of your users loses a major account because they missed a meeting with a major client because of this issue. Not good...
Click to expand...

http://www.tech-unity.com/forums/showthread.php?p=47972#post47972

Baba O'Riley · Feb 7, 2007

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Doesn't affect us Mitzs, it's the first I heard of it. Every year when our clocks change we have a debate whether we should move our clocks in time with Europe but either farmers or the Scottish or the safety campaigners put a stop to it so nothing ever changes.

hbroomhall · Feb 7, 2007

I've known about this for some time, along with the changes in Oz. Neither should affect us in the UK unless we work for multi-nationals.

Harry.

Phoenix · Feb 7, 2007

Harry is correct, it will effect any multi nationals with UK operations as well as any UK company with ingrained US visibility

Centralised time systems can get around this by handling the change at a higher level than on a per desktop basis, as well as shrink the impact on calanders and the like, but key infrastructure should be made aware of the changes whatever country your in, including AD, Exchange, Phone systems, anything else that utilises free/busy info

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Warning - Is The Daylight Savings Time The New Y2K?

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Warning - Is The Daylight Savings Time The New Y2K?

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