Hi guys I was wondering how other systems administrators are preparing for the new Time Zones exchange 2003 update (Daylight savingstime change for windows). http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx I'd like to hear from you guys about your contingency plans and what practical ideas you think thus far are the best. It'd be great if we all could bring ideas to the table as to how to minimize the interruption that this update might bring on users, and how to guarantee a "safe" enterprise deploymentof this update/tool.I would greatly appreciate your input. -Thanks!

I'd like to know if its really necessary. Are the only appointments affected those that fall between the extended DST dates and created under DST2006 rules? Deciphering the Microsoft'ese in all the KB articles, it appears to me that after the OS time fix is applied all newly created calendar items that fall within the extended DST dates are unaffected, that we're only retrofitting appointments already created using DST2006 rules. Is that correct? If so, I'd rather educate my users about the time difference and tell them they need to update or recreate the appointments they createdinstead of running a tool against my entire Exchange system or granting all 5600 end users local admin rights just to run the tool. Why the Outlook tool requires admin rights is a mystery to me.

We decided not to run the Exchange Tool. Too many unknowns, plus users will still need to check their calendars for appointments it missed or changed in error. We will complete all patching this weekend and have users check their calendars and re-book appointments manually on Monday. For anyone who feels the need, we can run the Outlook Tool individually for them under their own login.

Only appointments that werre created or fall in the extended DST time using DST 2006 would be fixed with the tool. So, as long as you educate your users you should be fine. However, have you thought about running the tool with the /ONLYRECURRING switch for recurring meetings in the extended DST period and then have the users fix there single-instance appointments? HTH, Curt

We ultimately decided to use a startup and shutdown script to ensure the OS update was applied instead of relying on the random install proess that WSUS provides. In the email to our end users informing them of the DST change and impending script to fix each computer we provided a "layman's" description of the affects the DST change would have in Outlook and what each user would need to do in order to fix the affected calendar items. Out of 5800 end users we had only 5 replies with questions and not all of those were related to the DST itself. Over all it went very smooth.