UPDATE: 22 February 2007

Automated Tool to Address Daylight Saving Time Impact on GroupWise Appointments: Critical Information for GroupWise and IT Administrators

The coming legislative changes in Daylight Saving Time can impact some appointments in Novell GroupWise systems by changing their scheduled appointment time by one hour. Novell is building an automated tool to accompany the manual correction measures already provided by the Novell GroupWise team. The tool will be a GWCheck option and will be available for download at http://download.novell.com/ by March 1, 2007. Administrators will need to run the tool on all post offices in order to automatically adjust the majority of affected appointment items.

It's important to understand that the tool alone will not resolve all known issues. We will provide specific details next week when we post the tool. If you prefer to get a jump on the process, please visit

https://secure-support.novell.com/KanisaPlatform/Publishing/741/3802376_f.SAL_Public.html to reference the Daylight Saving Time manual process documentation. Thank you for your attention to this issue.

For information on Daylight Saving Time changes relative to other Novell products, visit http://www.novell.com/info/daylight_saving.html.

Novell GroupWise Product Team

IT Alert: Action Required

Daylight Saving Time Change Impacts GroupWise Appointments

This message contains critical information that all GroupWise and IT administrators need to understand and act upon. The recent passage of the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 will extend Daylight Savings Time by four weeks in the U.S. and Canada. Beginning in 2007, Daylight Savings Time will begin on March 11 and end on November 4. This change can affect some calendar messages sent out by GroupWise, Exchange, or any other collaboration system. Appointments sent out before appropriate measures have been taken may be off by one hour during the weeks that have been added to the Daylight Savings Time period.

Below is a list of resources to assist in addressing this issue:

• Novell Technical Information Document (TID) that provides details for how administers should respond

• Novell Open Audio Podcast: Alert for GroupWise and Changes to Daylight Saving Time

• List of suggested measures to resolve affected appointments

• Resolution document for server operating systems and desktop clients

• Quick Guide: Setting Up a Search Folder To Locate Affected Calendar Items

• Sample Communication From IT Administrators to Internal Audience on How to Respond

Novell Technical Information Document (TID)

A Novell Technical Information Document (TID) gives additional details:

http://www.novell.com/support/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=3802376&sliceId=SAL_Public&dialogID=24131046&stateId=0 0 24133001

Novell Open Audio Podcast

Alert for GroupWise System Administrators: Upcoming changes to Daylight Saving Time can seriously affect your end users' scheduled appointments in the immediate future. Gregory Webb, marketing manager for Novell GroupWise, brings in product manager Bill Pray and technical support engineer Alex Evans to explain the issue and how to manage it for your organization. Podcast available at:

http://www.novell.com/feeds/openaudio/?p=131.

List of suggested measures to resolve affected appointments

GroupWise clients translate all appointments to Universal time at the moment of scheduling, and they rely on client information to do so. As the TID describes, the best customer strategy for dealing with this change is as follows:

• Update workstation time zone definitions as soon as possible

• Advise users to inspect appointments in the affected time periods (second half of March, first week of November)

• Advise users to reset their workstation time zone

Resolution document for server operating systems and desktop clients

Novell has released a time zone update for SUSE Linux Desktop 10, and Microsoft has released a time zone update for Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, and WS 2003 SP1. Vista ships with the appropriate time zone information. For additional details on handling SLED and Microsoft Windows, please see the following:

http://www.novell.com/support/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=3802376&sliceId=SAL_Public&dialogID=24131046&stateId=0 0 24133001

When appointments have been sent before workstations have been updated, and those appointments fall into the affected times, the senders of those appointments are advised to resend them after their time zone information has been updated.

Quick Guide: Setting Up a Search Folder To Locate Affected Calendar Items

Some persons have suggested that Novell develop a tool to adjust appointments automatically. We considered this suggestion, but we found so many exceptions that it would make such a tool ineffective and, in many cases, worse than the original problem. Instead, we've assembled a detailed guide that IT and GroupWise administrators can provide to end users that walks them through how to set up a search folder in GroupWise that will locate affected calendar items. The guide is located at: http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/18564.html

Sample Communication From IT Administrators to Internal Audience on How to Respond

The sample communication is available at:
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/18563.html

We apologize for this inconvenience. Novell and the GroupWise team took early action to develop a plan for handling this government-imposed change, and we are convinced that our recommendations are the best possible means given the situation.

-- GroupWise Product Team