From: Hines, Kevin (COT)
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 3:43 PM
To: COT Technical Contacts; COT Windows Server Support; COT AD Team; COT Wireless Support
Cc: Morgan, Phillip (COT); Thomas, Shawn (COT); Cowherd, Katie (COT); COT Email Team
Subject: Important Info Regarding Daylight Savings Time Patches
Technical Contacts:
As some of you may know, the upcoming changes in the Daylight Savings Time (DST) mandate changes to the information systems with which we work. Being fully ready for the change in DST requires several actions on the part of COT, first-level support within state agencies, and all end-users within our network:
(1) Patches must be applied to both servers and workstations so that all computer systems are aware of the changes.
(2) Tools must be run to correct calendars already having entries in the differential window of the new DST (March 11th - April 1st). These tools will need to be run from both the Exchange servers and the end-user workstation PC's to correct appointments not updated to the correct time in the new DST window.
(3) Owners of calendars in personal mailboxes, resource mailboxes and public folders need to review those calendars regularly to make sure appointment times are correct.
COT intends to mitigate as much as possible problems caused by this change. We plan to do this by:
(1) Installing patches on the Exchange servers the weekend of February 17-18.
(2) Running the Exchange side tool on recurring appointments in calendars of personal mailboxes. Running the tool against the Exchange servers is resource intensive and may take a significant amount of time (multiple days) to run against all Exchange servers. This is why we plan to run the Exchange tool against recurring appointments only.
(3) Running the Exchange side tool against calendars of auto-reply resource mailboxes.
Despite COT's actions, the changes will not be completely transparent to end-users. We have several recommendations to end-users and their first-level support:
(1) Patch all workstation PC's and agency servers to the latest patch level at the earliest possible time. The DST patches are not High Priority/Critical patches on Microsoft's update site, update.Microsoft.com. The DST patches can be obtained through the 'Custom' update method.
(2) Consider including the start time in the subject lines of any appointments that occur during the DST differential window (March 11th - April 1st) as a means to verify what is displayed on the calendar.
(3) Run the Outlook version of the DST Tool for end-user mailboxes only after application of workstation patches and confirmation from COT that the patches have been successfully applied to the Exchange servers.
(4) Run the Outlook version of the DST Tool for Public Folder calendars owned by end-users. The Exchange side tool does not update appointments in Public Folder calendars.
(5) Stay aware of calendar appointments and their anticipated time periods.
(6) Meetings that are updated by the Exchange tool will result in new invitations being sent out to all attendees. Attendees may see a large number of "Updated:…" meeting invitations generated that correct the meeting time.
(7) End-users should only manually correct appointments as a last resort.
(8) BlackBerry users should be prepared for an update pushed from the Blackberry Enterprise Server, BES. Accept the download to update the device for the DST patch. The patch can be delayed three times by the user from being installed. On the third time, the patch will automatically install.
Thanks
Kevin W. Hines
Information System Supervisor
Enterprise Services Team
101 Cold Harbor Dr
Frankfort, KY 40601
(P) 564-0635
(C) 330-8015
(F) 696-3851