Not sending Updates? Check for meeting corruption with the /x flag.

It's easy to understand why you might find the Update storm a hassle. And you've probably made sure your Microsoft reps have heard this.

So the latest Microsoft Time Zone Update tool lets you suppress Updates.

But, after you've read the warnings about what could happen if you suppress Updates in KB 933146, you should also check out some other warnings about this being contraindicated behavior in the following other Microsoft articles:

• KB 899704: Description of common scenarios in which Calendar information may be removed from the Calendar or may be inaccurate (search for "Update")
• Outlook Meeting Requests: Essential Do's and Don'ts: "Send Updates" is the second point here.

As always -- our credo is "test the snot out of software in your lab before you deploy to your production environment." If you have no problems in your lab then odds are in your favor when you move to production.

Quick Test for Corrupt Meetings

In the course of various post-migration follow ups we've heard of corrupt / damaged meetings (and improper updates is only one of the possible vectors of infection). So the Utilities have a /x flag to check:

su /u:exec_cr /x

Will look for mis-matches (i.e., a meeting in the OWNER's calendar that is in a different time / place from the entry in the calendar for the Executive Conference Room (exec_cr).

This particular flag got most of its use early on in smaller Exchange installations, so it currently might not scale to large organizations very well (but neither did some of the other flags until a few weeks ago).