Another Wonderful MS Feature

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nobody

Thanks to Microsoft's wonderful handling of DST, I now have some
appointments that are an hour early and more that are an hour late and
a few that are at the right time. My assistant has a different set of
apointments that are early, late and on time.

Unfortunately, there is no indication which of our apointments are
correct and which were moved by Bill's minions.

Last Friday, I sent out a meeting confirmation for a 2:30 meeting next
Tuesday. Some people were asked to confirm a 2:30 meeting and others
a 3:30 meeting.

Isn't Microsoft and all of its undocumented features wonderful!?!?!?
 
Isn't Microsoft and all of its undocumented features wonderful!?!?!?
Click to expand...

It appears that Outlook cannot handle it when one person's machine is
updated to the new DST rules before others'. I experience the problem
also because I updated my machine months ago. All appointments I
received from organizers that hadn't yet updated their machines appeared
as one hour ahead of the scheduled time and these appointments didn't
change after the time change or update.

In other words, if a recipient of an invitation has updated their
machine and the organizer has not, chaos ensues.
 
How is it MS's fault that not all of your recipients installed the update to
handle the DST update the US government put into effect?

The MS tools were designed to help make it easier to change the appointments
affected by the change. It is more complicated when some computers were
updated ahead of others (apparently your problem). This is also not MS's
problem, especially within a corporation where the Admin should be
controlling updates. The only other option would be for each user to adjust
the appointments on their own, one at a time.

Microsoft suggested users print out this calendar period for reference weeks
ago or to add notes to the subject or appointment body with the correct time
of the appointment, knowing it is impossible to avoid problems.
 
How is it MS's fault that not all of your recipients installed the update to
handle the DST update the US government put into effect?
Click to expand...

How is it Microsoft's fault? I am on a single machine maintaining my
own standalone calendar with no appointments shared with anyone. After
applying the patch I have a choice to either have my standalone and
all-day appointments correct but my recurring appointments off by an
hour, or have my recurring appointments correct but have my standalone
appointments changed by an hour and my all-day appointments extended
by a day. What does any of that have to do with adjusting my system
clock for daylight savings time, and why did Microsoft decide it had
to monkey with my calendar appointment times under the guise of
implementing what the government dictated? I guess the government
should have known that Microsoft could not handle a change like this
without screwing things up, assuming there is some justification for
the change to begin with. No winners here, only losers (the users that
is).
 
Diane said:
Microsoft suggested users print out this calendar period for reference weeks
ago or to add notes to the subject or appointment body with the correct time
of the appointment, knowing it is impossible to avoid problems.
Click to expand...


It's not impossible to avoid problems if you design your products with
foresight. Problems like this are almost always the result of making an
assumption that turns out to be incorrect (like assuming DST dates will
always be the same). Had someone designed the calendar function keeping
in mind that DST could change at any time, this wouldn't have been an
issue. For example, instead of tying an appointment to a particular
timezone they should just be recorded internally as GMT (which is always
the same) ALONG WITH the offset used to calculate GMT.

Perhaps an example will illustrate why this will work. Imagine that you
have two Outlook users, one has updated their Windows DST settings and
one has not. Now let's say that the user who has not updated sends a
meeting request to the updated user for 8:00am on Monday. The way
Outlook does it now is that it calculates the offset from GMT *at the
time of the meeting* and stores that time. When the organizer sends this
meeting request for Monday at 8:00am to the updated user, the updated
user's Outlook will notice that the scheduled time should be bumped up
an hour because it knows that the offset from GMT will be one hour less
on Monday. The updated user's calendar will show the meeting as 9:00am
on Monday. If Microsoft had only stored the meeting time as GMT AND the
offset used to calculate it, it would play out differently. In that case
the organizer's meeting would have been stored internally as Monday at
16:00 with an offset of -8:00 (PST). The updated computer would receive
that and know that on Monday the offset from GMT is -7:00 and that there
is an hour discrepancy between when the meeting was requested and when
it should actually be scheduled (i.e., 8:00am instead of 9:00am).

I don't think people are displeased that Microsoft was unsuccessful in
ensuring 100% of people applied this patch, but just because it was
poorly designed in the first place.
 
How is it MS's fault that not all of your recipients installed the update to
handle the DST update the US government put into effect?
Click to expand...

How is it Microsoft's fault? I am on a single machine maintaining my
own standalone calendar with no appointments shared with anyone. After
applying the patch I have a choice to either have my standalone and
all-day appointments correct but my recurring appointments off by an
hour, or have my recurring appointments correct but have my standalone
appointments changed by an hour and my all-day appointments extended
by a day. What does any of that have to do with adjusting my system
clock for daylight savings time, and why did Microsoft decide it had
to monkey with my calendar appointment times under the guise of
implementing what the government dictated? I guess the government
should have known that Microsoft could not handle a change like this
without screwing things up, assuming there is some justification for
the change to begin with. No winners here, only losers (the users that
is).
 
I forgot! MS is never at fault no matter what stupid thing the
company does.

Could you tell me when MS sent me a warning that my Outlook calendar
would go crazy if I updated my software with its DST fix and that it
would go even crazier if some I have an appointment with didn't do it?
 
MS does a lot of stupid things - but this is one thing that is not of their
doing. They could have easily said you're on your own, edit all of your
appointments when the new DST rules go into effect.... it would have
resulted in even more complaints.

Anyone who knows how the calendar works knew exactly what would happen when
the rules changed. Yeah, you coulda skipped the update and moved the clock
ahead but that's not without issue either. Sites that planned ahead and
updated systems weeks ago handled this change quite well with just a few
problems. Companies that waited until the last min ran into more problems -
companies with older computer systems also had more problems.
 
I forgot! MS is never at fault no matter what stupid thing the
company does.

Could you tell me when MS sent me a warning that my Outlook calendar
would go crazy if I updated my software with its DST fix and that it
would go even crazier if some I have an appointment with didn't do it?
Click to expand...

In addition to what Diane says, the TZ mover tool for Outlook ASKS which of
your appointments you want it to mess with. If you blithely tell it to
change appointments you didn't want changed, whose fault is that?
 
Brian said:
In addition to what Diane says, the TZ mover tool for Outlook ASKS which
of your appointments you want it to mess with. If you blithely tell it
to change appointments you didn't want changed, whose fault is that?
Click to expand...

I wish. No matter what I select (and I have tried at least a dozen
combinations), it just reports that there are no appointments or
meetings to change and then closes.
 
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