Most of you are probably aware of the issues around countries changing Daylight Saving Time (DST). Because these changes tend to come after the time zones were coded in Microsoft products, a lot of thought and work has been done both at Microsoft and customer sites to keep things running smoothly.  For instance we have seen in the past meeting times in calendars move an hour when a country switches over to DST on a new date.  Microsoft made a lot of changes to accommodate the changing dates of DST. There were tools written to move calendar items, and changes to make shifting the dates easier.

Did you know that starting the last weekend in October, Russia will no longer observe “Daylight Saving Time” (DST) and will effectively remain on “summer time”?

If you're interested (or concerned) about this, visit M3 Sweatt's blog for details on a webcast on the change and steps Microsoft is taking to mitigate any issues that might come up because of the it: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mthree/archive/2011/09/12/dstconf-091211.aspx

Be quick, the webcast is scheduled for September 15, 2011, 10:00 am to 11:30 am Pacific Daylight Time.

For more information on the changes in Daylight Savings Time around the world and its impact on Microsoft products, you can visit the main DST webpage: http://microsoft.com/time.

Remember it's "Spring Forward, Fall Back"….

As many of you are probably aware, the Exchange Team has released Update Rollup 5 for Exchange 2010 SP1 otherwise known as “Exchange 2010 SP1 RU5”. 

Because of the history of the latest rollups that have been released, many have decided to wait and not deploy this rollup at this time.  While that is certainly understandable, we felt that it might be useful to provide a brief synopsis of each of the fixes that are included in this rollup.  By taking a few minutes to read the items below, you may find some reasons why it might be a good idea to roll out the fix now. 

Some fixes included in Rollup are below:

• Slow network or replication issues after you change the number of virus scanning API threads in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
  The Exchange Server Analyzer (formerly known as ExBPA) recommended that the VSAPI threads be bumped up higher than they should have been which could lead to network performance issues or replications issues.
  
• A device that uses Exchange ActiveSync cannot access mailboxes in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  There was an issue with the way the Exchange 2010 CAS server would proxy requests to an Exchange 2007 server.  In some cases it would wait for a request to be completed when it did not need to and would submit additional requests that were not necessary.
  
• Journal reports are expired or lost when the Microsoft Exchange Transport service is restarted in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  This fixes a scenario where a journal report could be lost and never reach its intended destination.  
  
• You cannot use the GetItem operation in EWS to retrieve properties of an email message in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  This fixes a scenario where EWS was not handling attachments correctly. 
  
• The columns in the .csv logging file are not lined up correctly when you perform a discovery search on a mailbox in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  When doing a discovery search on a mailbox and exporting the results to a .csv file the columns would not line up correctly because of how we handled the subject line that had special characters.
  
• The columns in the .csv logging file are not lined up correctly when you perform a discovery search on a mailbox in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  Same as the item directly above except the cause is a comma being in the display name.
  
• "There are no items to show in this view." error message when you try to view a folder by using Outlook in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  This fixes another case in which this would happen that was not fixed previously in the fix mentioned here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2500648
  
• Extra.exe crashes when it performs RPC activity checks against an Exchange Server 2010 server
  This fixes a crash that would happen when running Microsoft Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant (Extra.exe) and selecting the “Collect Exmon Data” check box.
  
• You cannot delete a mailbox folder that starts with a special character in its name by using Outlook in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  The title says it all…
  
• "ChangeKey is required for this operation" error message in Outlook for Mac 2011 in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  Moving an item and then changing the category of the item using Outlook for Mac 2011 would throw the above error when the client synchronized the changes with Exchange 2010.
  
• The "Test-OutlookConnectivity -Protocol HTTP" cmdlet fails to test the Outlook Anywhere connectivity in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  The Test-OutlookConnectivity cmdlet includes several tests including one for RPCProxy Authentication. This part of the test could fail even if you specified the switch RPCProxyAuthenticationType.
  
• The copy or move operation on a folder that contains subfolders does not work as expected after you install Update Rollup 4 that is dated June 22, 2011 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1
  This includes the fix that was the reason Update Rollup 4 was re-released.  In other words, if you had installed the original RU4 that was dated June 22, 2011 and never installed the updated one, then RU5 would resolve this as well.
  
• You cannot save attachments in an email message by using OWA if the subject line contains special characters in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  This would happen when using Internet Explorer 7 with OWA Premium.  It doesn’t affect  IE8 or IE9 or OWA Light.
  
• A RBAC role assignee can unexpectedly run the Add-ADPermission command on an Exchange Server 2010 server that is outside the role assignment scope
  Exchange 2010 now verifies the scope when Add-ADPermission is run.
  
• Mailbox users who are migrated by using ILM 2007 cannot use the Options menu in OWA in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  Update-Recipient did not stamp the Default Role Assignment Policy and when a migrated mailbox user would click on the Options in OWA they would get a “Sorry! Access denied” error.
  
• Certain client-only message rules do not take effect on email messages that are saved as drafts in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  Some client-side rules don’t work when your Outlook client is in online mode.
  
• The inline contents disposition is removed when you send a "Content-Disposition: inline" email message by using EWS in an Exchange Server 2010 environment
  This fixes an issue where a message sent using Exchange Web Services through Exchange 2010 may end up with some of the message missing or added as an attachment when it should not have been.  Outlook 2011 for Mac is a client that can use Exchange Web Services.

We in Premier Field Engineering know what it is like to have to make decisions that may affect hundreds of thousands of mailboxes because many of us used to be in your shoes before joining Microsoft.  Hopefully the information above will help a little more with your decision.

As always, feel free to ask questions below or email us using the "Tell us!” link above.