Timezone in recurring appointments

Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic

   The timezone in recurring appointments for the MAPI provider has been affected somehow by the recent daylight savings changes. All recurring appointments are displaying 1 hour earlier in the Codejock calendar than they do in the Outlook calendar. This is only an issue for instances created PRIOR to applying the daylight savings patch, but occuring in the narrow 3 week window where the daylight savings dates are different. I have data that can be used to reproduce this if you need.

Wait, it gets better!! If I right click on the appointment in outlook and select edit series, then I click to modify the pattern, the start and end time displayed for the appointment are the same as the start and end time at which it displays in the Codejock calendar!!! What this means is that Outlook has "fixed" the daylight savings issue, not by fixing the data, but by displaying it at the wrong (new right) time for 3 weeks in the spring and 1 in the fall.

Wait it gets even BETTER!!!! Since appointments created AFTER applying the patch don't have this problem, we can assume that Outlook somehow knows how to distinguish between a correct timezone, and an incorrect timezone internally. I suspect that my recent post on a bug reading in the timezone is related to how they know what is what. The timezone I encountered was quite a bit longer than timezones were before.

Author	Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic
JohnCrenshaw Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 08 September 2006 Status: Offline Points: 65	Post Options Post Reply Quote JohnCrenshaw Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Timezone in recurring appointments Posted: 26 March 2007 at 5:35pm
	The timezone in recurring appointments for the MAPI provider has been affected somehow by the recent daylight savings changes. All recurring appointments are displaying 1 hour earlier in the Codejock calendar than they do in the Outlook calendar. This is only an issue for instances created PRIOR to applying the daylight savings patch, but occuring in the narrow 3 week window where the daylight savings dates are different. I have data that can be used to reproduce this if you need. Wait, it gets better!! If I right click on the appointment in outlook and select edit series, then I click to modify the pattern, the start and end time displayed for the appointment are the same as the start and end time at which it displays in the Codejock calendar!!! What this means is that Outlook has "fixed" the daylight savings issue, not by fixing the data, but by displaying it at the wrong (new right) time for 3 weeks in the spring and 1 in the fall. Wait it gets even BETTER!!!! Since appointments created AFTER applying the patch don't have this problem, we can assume that Outlook somehow knows how to distinguish between a correct timezone, and an incorrect timezone internally. I suspect that my recent post on a bug reading in the timezone is related to how they know what is what. The timezone I encountered was quite a bit longer than timezones were before.

JohnCrenshaw Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 08 September 2006 Status: Offline Points: 65	Post Options Post Reply Quote JohnCrenshaw Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 26 March 2007 at 5:42pm
	Minor update, editing the time for the recurrence pattern and saving it will make the daylight savings timezone correct. Tasks with the corrected timezone display properly in both calendars.

JohnCrenshaw Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 08 September 2006 Status: Offline Points: 65	Post Options Post Reply Quote JohnCrenshaw Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 19 July 2007 at 2:16pm
	HAH! Being a computer programmer is like being a cat; if you don't like something, ignore it for a while, and it will usually improve itself. I stumbled across some documentation that should yield a sollution here. Apparantly Outlook stores timezone information in 4 places. The MAPI data provider only considers one of these, but the others have to be considered to get the proper results for these legacy appointments. The link is http://blogs.msdn.com/stephen_griffin/archive/2006/12/06/outlook-2007-timezone-structures.aspx. I'll try to post a fix for this in time for the next timezone transition where, for 3 weeks, certain appointments created before this past spring will show an hour off. If anyone needs a fix sooner feel free to reply here and light a fire under me.