Here Comes The Sun!

The start of Daylight Saving Time (DST) is just around the corner. For many people, that just means later sunrises and sunsets, plus one less hour of sleep for one night. But, those of us running computer operations and managing job scheduling have to be more concerned.

A while ago, an industry newsletter article complained that Help/Systems doesn’t automatically switch Robot/SCHEDULE’s internal clock. That’s true—we don’t know the best time to move the clock forward for your schedule. If we did it automatically, at a given time, you might miss jobs.

In the U.S., DST begins the second Sunday of March and ends the first Sunday of November. (In some countries, DST begins the last Sunday of March.) For 2010, it will begin Sunday, March 14 at 2 a.m. At that time, the clock moves ahead one hour ("Spring forward").

We have a procedure you can run in Robot/SCHEDULE to change your Robot/SCHEDULE time at a time that is convenient for your schedule. This Robot/NEWS Flash story links to the documentation.

You and your Operations team should control your daylight saving changes because you know your business schedule. Some customers adjust the time before night processing; others wait until morning to switch. Either way, everyone can be prepared to jump ahead an hour this spring because Robot/SCHEDULE is on the job.