We could fill volumes in this blog about everything that went wrong with creating a workable technology solution for the change in Daylight Savings Time, but less than a week out here is the harsh reality: any technology fix at this point will be a cure that is worse than the disease. For the three week span between the new and old DST, the best fix will be a decidedly low tech approach, calling or emailing your meeting attendees to confirm the time of the appointment.

This is not to say that network administrators will get a free ride. There are still servers to patch and workstations to upgrade so that each computer will recognize the time change. But each of us must not rely on a technology solution to make sure your calendar appointments will display the correct time.

Changing the date is a surprisingly complicated problem given all the ways calendar events are created and shared. What device created the event? In what time zone is the person who created the message? What state is the person in who created the event (like Arizona that doesn’t do daylight time)? How many people inside and outside the organization are on the appointment. Changing the correct time in one platform like Exchange could lead to a myriad of meeting update requests that are readily ignored by users deluged by update requests.

One suggestion is to include the start and end times for appointments in the subject lines. We would add picking up the phone to confirm the time. That has the added benefit of the personal touch.