CorporateTime and the New Daylight Saving Time

The U.S. Government has changed the dates for daylight saving time, effective this year (2007). Clocks will be set one hour ahead three weeks earlier in the spring, and will be set back one week later in the fall. A brief description of why this change has been made, and some potential problems that may arise, was published in the Washington Post on February 1 - read it here. Oracle (our CorporateTime vendor) has updated their calendaring software using the new dates.

The update for the CorporateTime Calendar software was added to the Macalester server shortly after 4:30 PM on Friday, February 9.


Any meetings that were placed on a calendar prior to the software being updated for the weeks that used to be standard time, but are now daylight saving time, may appear one hour off from what they should be. For 2007, the weeks beginning on March 11, March 18, March 25, and October 28 fall within the new daylight saving time period. The only way to correct the problem is for people to open each event and change the time. ITS cannot make this change for you because we do not know which meetings are at the wrong time.


To avoid incorrect meeting times, calendar users should do the following :

• Print your calendar (and any calendars you manage) for the time period that falls between March 11 and April 1, as well as October 28 and November 4 so you will have a record to compare meetings after the software update. If you have meetings scheduled for those weeks in future years, you should print those also.

The dates for the next two years are:

2008: March 9 – April 6 and October 26 – November 2
2009: March 8 – April 5 and October 25 – November 1

• If possible do not create additional meetings for the affected weeks until after ITS has updated the server on February 9.

• After the update, correct any affected meetings that fall between March 11, 2007 and April 1, 2007 as well as between October 28, 2007 and November 4, 2007. You can do this by just dragging the meeting to the correct time.

Remember that only the owner of an event can move the meeting. People who were invited to the meeting, but didn't actually schedule it cannot move it. You can check ownership by double-clicking on the meeting and then looking at the Proposed by field that appears at the top of the Edit Meeting window.

Below is a calendar for March 6, 2007 - the last Tuesday prior to the time change. Notice the time of the Desktop Services  meeting on the calendar. This is a meeting that occurs every Tuesday at 8:15 am.



Below is the same calendar for the next Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - which is the third day of the new daylight saving time. Notice that the Desktop Services meeting now appears at 9:15 am, even though it was originally scheduled for 8:15 am.



PALM USERS:
If you use a Palm OS handheld, a patch is available to help protect against DST-caused schedule disruptions:
www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/dst_palmos.html

If you have questions, please contact the Computing Help Desk at x6525