Daylight Saving Time (DST) Tips
To minimize scheduling conflicts:
- Pay extra attention to appointments scheduled between Sunday, March 11 and Sunday, April 1, the "extended DST period." Make sure all attendees have correctly updated calendar items. Single meetings are more likely to be affected than recurring meetings. Because they don’t contain time zone information, its impossible for the Outlook Time Zone Update tool to tell whether or not they need updating.
- Include time of meeting in the message body of your meeting requests. If the time is not in the specified in body a meeting message, verify times with the organizer.
- Put a reminder on your calendar for early March to print hard copies of your calendar through April 1 (the extended DST period). Do this before you apply any patches with updated time zone definitions.
- Print out your calendar often for use as a backup.
- Update all of your connected devices that need to be updated. Don’t forget your cell phone and PDAs.
- Tell your friends! The Outlook updates that IT will apply only update meetings you organized. Every meeting organizer needs have the update applied to affect meetings they’ve organized. Have a delegate organizing meetings on your behalf? They need the update as well. Please contact your local LAN manager or the Help Desk if you have questions regarding meetings scheduled by others.
- Be sure to update your home computer.
To update your Computer:
Additional Information:
Even if you lose a meeting or two, remember that things could always be worse. Chaos was created in the 1950s and 60s when each U.S. locality could start and end DST as they desired. One year, 23 different pairs of DST start and end dates were used in Iowa alone. For five weeks each year, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were not on the same time as Washington D.C., Cleveland, or Baltimore—but Chicago was. And, on one Ohio to West Virginia bus route, passengers had to change their watches seven times in 35 miles. Imagine programming for that!
