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Since 1986, we have gotten used to “springing forward” on the 1st Sunday in April and “fall back” on the last Sunday in October. But last year – 2006 -- marks the end of it and starting this year – 2007 – we will be “springing forward” 3 weeks earlier. For 2007, the day we lose an hour of sleep falls on March 11th. But for IT professionals, there might be more hours of sleep lost due to the patches and user support needed to accommodate this change. Let’s take a look at what are the patches needed.
The effects of the change are especially important to Outlook users and Exchange administrators because of how appointments and timestamps are going to be affected. For administrators of outdated Windows operating systems and applications, that effect is even more profound.
How various versions of operating systems are affected:
Windows Server 2003, SP1, Windows XP SP2 |
An update is available. Refer to KB931836. |
Previous versions |
These products have reached their end-of-life (EOL). There is no update patch provided freely by Microsoft. Refer to KB914387 for instructions on an arduous manual update. |
How various versions of Exchange are affected:
Exchange 2007 |
No updates required |
Exchange 2003 (SP2) |
Final update is now available. Refer to KB926666. |
Exchange 2003 (SP1) |
An update is now available. Refer to KB931978. |
Exchange 2000 |
Exchange 2000 is now under Extended Support phase until January 2011, customers with extended hotfix support can request hotfix through their Technical Account Managers.
Or follow the arduous steps outlined in KB914387. Or, try this unofficial Windows 2000 Daylight Saving Time Patch by IntelliAdmin. (Caution: this patch was released by a third party and we have no explicit or implicit guarantee of its functionality. Use at your own risk) |
Previous Exchange versions |
These products have reached their end-of-life (EOL). There is no manual workarounds or updates released by Microsoft. Official updates can only be obtained via purchasing a support ticket with Microsoft. |
Recommended order of applying DST patches for your Outlook/Exchange environment
After referring to the charts above on whether the versions of your servers and applications are supported, it’s now time to apply the patches. This is also the recommended order of patching that they communicate to their partners. If appointments are created between patches are applied, time skew could happen. Applying these patches closely together will minimize that possibility.
There are too many possible scenarios that will go beyond the scope of this article, so for simplicity, the update process to a Windows Server 2003 based Exchange server and Windows XP workstations with Outlook 2003 clients is described here. Alternative scenarios are discussed in the various Microsoft knowledgebase aricles.
Note: If your organization has users who create many recurring calendar items using Outlook Web Access, your patch sequence will differ slightly. Refer to KB931667 for details.
a. Before applying any patches, ask your users to print out a copy of their calendars for the weeks being affected, preferrably a week before and a week after the affected DST periods -- 3/4/07 Sunday to 4/7/07 Saturday, and 10/21/07 Sunday to 11/10/07 Saturday. The additional weeks will help align recurring meeting times. Keep the print-out for reference in later steps.
1. Apply server 2003 operating system patch from KB931836 “February 2007 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems” onto your servers, or here is the patch for 32-bit Windows Server 2003.
2. Apply XP operating system patch onto your client machines from the same article KB931836, or here is the patch for XP 32-bit machines.
3. Apply update to Windows mobile devices if you have them in your environment, refer to Microsoft’s Daylight Saving Time 2007 Update page from the Windows Mobile team. There are multiple ways of applying the patches, whether you or your users connect to a PC to synchronize or synchronize “over the air”.
4. Apply the Exchange 2003 CDO patch outlined in KB926666 “Update for daylight saving time changes in 2007 for Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2”. This will ensure that Outlook Web Access will also be patched properly. Here is the direct link to the patch for both Standard and Enterprise editions.
5. Run either the Exchange or Outlook Time Zone Data Update Tool or manually update Outlook calendars that are saved on the Exchange servers based on KB931667. So what is the difference between these two tools? See the next section.
6. After everything is done, ask your users to double check all their appointments in the affected period shown below. If the appointment times are still 1 hour late, the update did not execute perfectly. You can correct it by manually changing the appointment time as well. Between patches, appointments during the affected periods will be off by an hour. You may notice the shift by comparing weekly recurring meetings outside and inside the affected periods. After all the updates are done, weekly recurring meetings should be aligned to start at the same time. Refer to the print-out generated in step (a) to confirm the intended appointment/meeting times.
:: March 11, 2007 and April 1, 2007
:: October 28, 2007 and November 4, 2007
Difference between the Exchange tool and the Outlook tool
A key point to note is that both tools are not patches. They’re created to help you automate the appointment time change process. However, as with any automation, certain things could still slip through the crack. Double checking by a human is always preferred.
It is perfectly fine to skip both tools and do the updates manually. In some cases, that might be preferred. If you choose not to run the tool, you can simply check the individual appointment items and adjust the time accordingly. If you have a meeting and you are the meeting organizer, by resending the meeting request after adjustment of the meeting time in your calendar, your recipients/attendees will be sent the update notice with the corrected times.
The Exchange Time Zone Data Update Tool (Exchange tool) is basically a wrapper around the Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft® Office Outlook® (Outlook Tool). The Exchange tool just handles the time zone processing on the server side and the Outlook tool does it on the client side. Any updates that can be done by the Exchange tool can be done by the Outlook tool. However, offline calendars can only be processed by the Outlook took, since the Exchange tool will not be able to reach offline mailboxes. So if you’re running the IT operation for your organization, the Exchange tool may be more useful. In some situations, i.e. there are online mailboxes and offline calendars in personal folders, you may need to deploy both tools. If you are in a smaller organization or have users with fewer appointments, you may also find that a manual update of appointment times is more straightforward and easier to follow for your users.
What if I don’t do anything at all?
If you do not apply any patch at all, during the time windows of March 11, 2007 -- April 1, 2007 and October 28, 2007 -- November 4, 2007, your clock will be off by an hour. If you do not have any timestamp-sensitive operations, i.e. server authentication, you may get by.
However, it is important that you do not simply adjust the computer clock by an hour to mimic the time change. Your computer’s local time is shown based on the UTC time +/- time zone different +/- DST 2007 adjustment for the affected periods. Adjusting the computer clock actually changes the UTC time which will cause more problems.
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