Text 16863, 151 rader
Skriven 2007-03-10 10:02:02 av mike (1:379/45)
Ärende: Microsoft Customers Irate over Daylight-Saving Time Woes
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From: mike <mike@barkto.com>


http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2102366,00.asp

===
The extension of daylight-saving time by a month in the United States is
causing enormous grief for some IT administrators running Microsoft software,
as many of the software programs running on their users' systems need to be
individually patched to reflect the change.

This year, DST (daylight-saving time) starts on Sunday, March 11—three weeks
earlier than usual—and ends a week later than usual on Nov. 4.

Microsoft has been warning customers that unless certain updates are applied to
their computers, the time zone settings for their system clock may be incorrect
during this four-week period.

"In particular, you must make sure that both your Windows operating system and
your calendar programs are updated," the company said on its support site.

In an acknowledgement of the seriousness of the DST change and the problems
being experienced by its customers, at 5 a.m. PT on March 8 Microsoft opened
its DST Support Central Site, a series of sites in Redmond, North Carolina, Las
Colinas and in India, where 24-hour support is provided for customers who run
into escalations.

"I have been here [in Redmond] all day long, and I have seen very few
escalations come through from our field. But it is early, so we may see more
tomorrow and the next day. But today we have not been flooded with requests for
information and guidance or help," M3 Sweatt, the chief of staff for the
Windows Core Operating System Development Group, told eWEEK.

But, that being said, Microsoft was already working closely with its enterprise
customers to ensure they had what they needed.

"Some of them are happy, some of them are not. But we are working with them as
best we can to make sure we are addressing their issues," he said.

As such, the Redmond software maker has also posted a list of the most commonly
asked questions it is receiving about DST, which customers can easily search to
find the answers to their questions, he said.

While Windows Vista, Exchange 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 do not
require any updates, a host of other products do, including Exchange Server,
Outlook, SQL Server Notification Services, Office Live Meeting, Microsoft
Entourage, Dynamics CRM, Windows SharePoint Services, Windows Mobile and
Windows CE.


But some customers are experiencing problems with implementing the patches and
getting them to work, and are expressing their frustration and anger in
comments on online chat sites.

Microsoft's online DST chat room, which the company is currently staffing with
technical experts 15 hours a day from 6 a.m. PST to 9 p.m. PST to facilitate
the discussion and resolution of issues around DST, is inundated with customers
experiencing a myriad of issues with the patches.

"This is INSANE. I buy a standard product for 2500 bucks and then I get a note
telling me to update it for a problem known for a couple years. And the patch
screws up my system. How long will my appointments be shifted? For three weeks
now and two weeks at the end of "old" dst?," a post from customer on the
Microsoft DST chat said.

Is the daylight-saving time change bigger than Y2K? Click here to read more.

Another customer experienced similar frustration. "When I try to bring up a
calendar date or appointment, the form required to view it is not available.
What do I do? Are you getting this error: The form you selected could not be
displayed. The form required to view this message cannot be displayed. Contact
your administrator?"

Microsoft's Sweatt acknowledged that DST updating had been a challenge for
customers with a myriad of solutions in their IT shop, whether those be from
Microsoft, Sun, IBM or Oracle, and who were now looking to their suppliers for
solutions.

"One of the things we have been working on closely is to provide them with the
solutions they need. If there is an escalation or a customer does not have an
answer, they can get through to us, and we are making sure they understand the
path to get their answer," he said.

But, that being said, Sweatt did admit that there were some areas where
Microsoft had been late to provide the solutions that customers needed,
specifically some customer updates such as for CRM 3.0.

"In those difficult situations we have tried to make sure that we have a
dialogue with customers so they understand what the options are. But we haven't
run into an issue that I'm aware of where we had incompatibilities with
products," he said.

"The challenges we have had have largely been with people's understanding of
what they should do when. Many customers also found out later that they had
other products installed that they may not have been aware of, and this then
meant that they had not followed Microsoft's guidance correctly, or were not
aware that we had refined our guidance," Sweatt said.

In addition, some customers are having problems accessing the chat room,
receiving an error message that states: "There was a problem loading the chat
application. Please try again later or use the Contact Us link at the bottom of
the page."


Making matters worse is the fact that some customers say that Microsoft's phone
support is also overwhelmed with callers trying to resolve their DST patch
issues, with many users put on hold for hours before actually talking to
someone, if they get through at all.

But Sweatt disputed this, saying that its logs show that most support calls are
initially answered in less than 30 minutes, with more time needed to resolve
very technical and complex questions.

Those customers with very complex issues were also not being kept waiting on
the phone, but were called back when the answer was available, he said.

For those customers still running products like Windows 2000, Exchange 2000 or
the earlier Exchange 5.5, are no longer in Microsoft mainstream support and are
thus not covered under standard support agreements, the situation is even more
dire, as it will cost them $4,000 for all the DST updates.

While Microsoft's online DST support site notes that DST updates for products
in mainstream support are provided at no charge, "those products in extended
support require an Extended Hotfix Support Agreement ($4,000 charge for all DST
updates). Products out of support are not available without a Custom Support
Agreement."

Sweatt said that Microsoft was advising customers to first install the
operating system patch (931836) on their servers, then on their clients, then
rebase their calendar appointments using TZMove (931667) / TZMove update 933146
/ Exchange tool 930879) and then to install the Exchange DST patch for CDO
(926666).

"For those customers who have just recently realized that DST changes this
weekend, we are trying to provide them with multiple access points—from online
chats to webcasts and phone support—to help answer their questions as quickly
as possible," he said.
===


I still cannot understand why MS Outlook needs to be patched?  Or other MS
applications.  Shouldn't MS Outlook (and other applications) be able to obtain
daylight savings info from the underlying OS?  It's not like MS Outlook was
written by some obscure software vendor that knows nothing about the
intermingling of apps and system software....


 /m

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