Calendar and Daylight Savings Time Reprised

[Steve@Cisco]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: Exchange

This is in follow up to several threads on this topic which Diane Ross has so diligently tried to solve for folks.

<http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Entourage/9198/0>

Entourage 12.1.7 still exhibits the Daylight Savings Adjustment problem that seems to have been a perennial thorn in Entourage's side for a number of years now.

I am including an ics file with this post which should help with the trouble shooting of the problem.

Background:
I use an on line meeting service which, if I want it to, will send me an ics file with the meeting details for me to import into my Calendar.

I am currently in GMT Daylight Savings Time (British Summer Time) or GMT+1. (UTC+1 also I believe is correct).

My MacBook is set to the BST Timezone by Synching with the Apple Clock at Apple Europe (time.euro.apple.com).

The following ics file contains meeting information (including Timezone and Daylight Savings Data) for a fictitious meeting that should be for 6PM BST and end at 7PM BST. Basically the Daylight Savings time in this context should be ignored by Entourage because the meeting is for a time inside the current timezone and so the meeting time should stand at 6PM (i.e. no offsets added or subtracted). Only if the meeting is for a date and time outside of the current Daylight Offset should the offset be applied.

I have imported the following file into iCal the Apple Calendar and it imports correctly. When this is imported into Entourage it is imported incorrectly and adds an hour to the actual time of the meeting with a start time of 7PM and and end time of 8PM.

Hopefully this will help Microsoft figure out how to fix the logic in Entourage.

I suspect the problem is that the ics file is carrying too much information that Entourage is over engineered to process instead of applying some basic logic about the meeting time and which offset timeline is being used.

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID: -//WebEx//MyWebex J2EE version ,1.0 //EN
VERSION:2.0
METHOD:REQUEST
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:GMT Time
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:20071001T030000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=10
TZOFFSETFROM:100
TZOFFSETTO:000
TZNAME:Standard Time
END:STANDARD
BEGINAYLIGHT
DTSTART:20070301T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=3
TZOFFSETFROM:000
TZOFFSETTO:100
TZNAMEaylight Savings Time
ENDAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
ATTENDEE;CN="";ROLE=REQ-PARTICIPANT;RSVP=TRUE:MAILTO:
ORGANIZER;CN="First Last":MAILTO:[email protected]
DTSTART;TZID="GMT Time":20090513T180000
DTEND;TZID="GMT Time":20090513T190000
LOCATION:Location
TRANSP:OPAQUE
SEQUENCE:1
UID:6.0303790-119587867
DTSTAMP:20090513T170000Z
DESCRIPTION:Meeting Description
SUMMARY:Meeting scheduled: Meeting Name
PRIORITY:5
CLASSUBLIC
BEGIN:VALARM
TRIGGERT5M
ACTIONISPLAY
DESCRIPTION:Reminder
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

 

[Diane Ross]

This is in follow up to several threads on this topic which Diane Ross has so
diligently tried to solve for folks.

See if the info here helps:

Correct Time displays in Entourage calendar by adjusting the correct System
Preferences

<http://tinyurl.com/5rxzus>

Date bug in Entourage 2008 causes birthday information loss

<http://tinyurl.com/5nkpzr>

I'll forward your message on for further testing.

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

Hi Steve!

My comments are inline with yours...

I am currently in GMT Daylight Savings Time (British Summer Time) or
GMT+1. (UTC+1 also I believe is correct).

My MacBook is set to the BST Timezone by Synching with the Apple
Clock at Apple Europe (time.euro.apple.com).

Time syncing will not affect Daylight Saving time. The NTP protocol
simply tells your computer the "correct time" as UTC time, which is
oblivious to time zones or Daylight Saving. Your computer is responsible
for calculating the offset for timezone as well as Daylight Saving Time.

The following ics file contains meeting information (including
Timezone and Daylight Savings Data) for a fictitious meeting that
should be for 6PM BST and end at 7PM BST. Basically the Daylight
Savings time in this context should be ignored by Entourage because
the meeting is for a time inside the current timezone and so the
meeting time should stand at 6PM (i.e. no offsets added or
subtracted). Only if the meeting is for a date and time outside of
the current Daylight Offset should the offset be applied.

I did a quick test:

1. Saved your ICS information to an .ics file.
2. Set Entourage to work offline and quit.
3. Set my Mac OS X system to time zone to London - England, which
currently shows as Time Zone: BST.
4. Launched Entourage and dragged the .ics file onto the Dock icon.

My events appears as GMT time zone, Wednesday, May 13, 6-7 p.m., if I
open it and view it. However, it appears as 7-8 p.m. if I view it as an
item on my calendar.

I think this corroborates what you're seeing. Basically, Entourage is
not recognizing GMT during Summer Time as being GMT+1.

I'll escalate this to the MacBU.

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[Steve@Cisco]

Thanks Mark Comments in line...


Hi Steve!

My comments are inline with yours...

I am currently in GMT Daylight Savings Time (British Summer Time) or
GMT+1. (UTC+1 also I believe is correct).

My MacBook is set to the BST Timezone by Synching with the Apple
Clock at Apple Europe (time.euro.apple.com).

Time syncing will not affect Daylight Saving time. The NTP protocol
simply tells your computer the "correct time" as UTC time, which is
oblivious to time zones or Daylight Saving. Your computer is responsible
for calculating the offset for timezone as well as Daylight Saving Time.

SDC: Yup I understand that but wanted to address any questions related to my HW Configuration before they got asked ;-).

The following ics file contains meeting information (including
Timezone and Daylight Savings Data) for a fictitious meeting that
should be for 6PM BST and end at 7PM BST. Basically the Daylight
Savings time in this context should be ignored by Entourage because
the meeting is for a time inside the current timezone and so the
meeting time should stand at 6PM (i.e. no offsets added or
subtracted). Only if the meeting is for a date and time outside of
the current Daylight Offset should the offset be applied.

I did a quick test:

1. Saved your ICS information to an .ics file.
2. Set Entourage to work offline and quit.
3. Set my Mac OS X system to time zone to London - England, which
currently shows as Time Zone: BST.
4. Launched Entourage and dragged the .ics file onto the Dock icon.

My events appears as GMT time zone, Wednesday, May 13, 6-7 p.m., if I
open it and view it. However, it appears as 7-8 p.m. if I view it as an
item on my calendar.

I think this corroborates what you're seeing. Basically, Entourage is
not recognizing GMT during Summer Time as being GMT+1.

SDC> Brill. Glad I am not hallucinating!

I'll escalate this to the MacBU.