News

Microsoft Releases DST Patch for Dynamics CRM

• By Stuart J Johnston
• March 8, 2007

Literally just in time, Microsoft is shipping a patch for its Dynamics CRM 3.0 package that adjusts for the daylight saving time (DST) changeover coming this weekend.

In a move aimed at conserving energy, Congress decided last year to extend DST in the United States beginning this year. DST is now set to begin on March 11, 2007 and end on November 4, 2007. For states that observe DTS, that causes the annual “spring forward” event to occur three weeks earlier than usual and the matching “fall back” event to be one week later than usual, resulting in a new DST period that is four weeks longer than in previous years.

Therefore, unless updates are applied, the time zone settings for computers’ system clocks may be wrong during those specific four weeks. Both the Windows operating system and calendar programs need to be updated. For more information, check out Microsoft’s Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center here.

That doesn’t take care of critical customer data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, however.

Since most CRM records contain date and time stamps, without the updates, activities that are scheduled during those four weeks will appear one hour earlier than they should.

The company, therefore, has released the Dynamics CRM 3.0 Time Zone Data Updates and Dynamics CRM 3.0 Update Time Zones Wizard, which include updates for Dynamics CRM 3.0 Service Provider Edition (SPE) as well as updates and the wizard required for installing updated time zone definitions and adjusting dates and times in Dynamics CRM 3.0 records that are affected by changes in time zone definitions.

After the operating system has been updated with new time zone definitions, the updates and wizard synchronize Dynamics CRM 3.0 time zone definitions with Windows and adjust records associated with dates and times in CRM records.

The updates and time zone wizard are available for download here.