Delving more into the problem of Worldmate and Microsoft Outlook with time zones.
As we noted in our brief look at Worldmate, the calendar import into Outlook isn’t as good as it could be, in fact it could be downright dangerous!
The Worldmate calendar data can be off by an hour as in this example.
That could be why Worldmate includes the time details in the comments as well. It’s something we do ourselves with flights as a backup against Outlook making unwanted time zone changes.
So see the problem let’s look at part of the raw ical feed from Worldmate
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20121205T200500Z
DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20121205T213500Z
The ‘DT’ values are the start and end time for the appointment. Worldmate is sending the date/time at UTC/GMT time. That’s what the ‘Z’ and the end of each line means (Z = Zulu which is military talk for UTC). That’s an understandable choice but, as we’ve seen, isn’t enough.
Ical Standards do allow for nominating a specific time zone and our example could be sent somewhat like this:
DTSTART;TZID=AU-EasternDaylight:20121205T070500
DTEND;TZID=AU-Eastern:20121205T073500
Whether Outlook would accept time zones in this or similar format is another matter. There’s no standardization for time zone labels in iCal. Microsoft would have to publish a reference so iCal publishers can put in a label that Outlook can match to one of its known time zones.
This isn’t any one organizations fault but time zones seem fall into the ‘too hard basket’ and glossed over by developers. For years Outlook didn’t show time zones in appointments even though the underlying database had the capability.
Microsoft could help by publishing some better assistance and info for developers. We could not find anything from Redmond while developers like this guy are left to fend for themselves.
Internet calendars are a great resource but Microsoft needs to pay a bit more attention to supporting the standard and, where necessary, adding some extensibility so Outlook can play nice with others.
Worldmate could better explain to users the limitations of iCal import into various programs, maybe with an unsubtle hint to Microsoft and others to get their act together.
See Also
- Worldmate and Outlook
- Peeking into travel agents computers
- London 2012 calendars for Outlook
- Office 365 time zone hassles
- Outlook Web Apps – time zone change
- Adding a time zone to Outlook
- More Daylight Saving woes for Aussies
- Google Calendar sync with Outlook
- Adding an appointment from a web site
- Outlook 2007 – time zones get marginal improvement
