We incorporated the new options for delivering the upgrade and configuring an update tempo for users into our deployment planning.
With Option 3, Configuration Manager downloads the updates from Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) and then delivers updates to users’ computers through distribution-point servers.įigure 1: Office 365 update options Upgrading clients to Office 365 ProPlus.Group Policy enforces the deadline for installing the update. With Option 2, we use the Office Deployment Tool to configure clients to get updates from Universal Naming Convention (UNC) shares.With Option 1, we use the default configuration in which clients get updates from CDN according to their update channel.The following figure shows three different ways that we can deliver updates to our users with Office 365 ProPlus:
This reduces traffic through the firewall and gives us a consistent way to discover, view, deploy, and track available software updates-similar to how we manage other apps in our organization. Configuration Manager is now integrated with our Microsoft Update service and can automatically deliver updates to our internal users. For our on-campus users, we have an additional option: using Configuration Manager to deliver updates over our internal network (not currently in use). Users automatically receive updates from the CDN over Internet connections according to their update-channel schedule. Our CDN has also given us more control over update delivery.
Regardless of channel, all users receive monthly security updates. Other users who want feature updates as soon as possible are configured to receive them from the Monthly Channel, so they receive updates monthly. Having some of our users on this slower release cadence gives us more time to validate the release and application compatibility before users receive the update. By default, users now receive feature updates on our Semi-annual Channel every six months. Now, using update channels-which are now available for Office 365 clients-we can specify how often users receive new features. Although this update tempo works well for most users, some of them have business reasons to receive updates less frequently.
Most of our users are running Office 365 ProPlus and are receiving monthly feature updates. Not only was the deployment easier, but managing updates has also become easier thanks to our Content Delivery Network (CDN). This preserved network bandwidth and also gave us the chance to apply lessons learned from early deployments to later ones. We configured it to automatically exclude certain systems and deliver upgrade packages in phases, so that different groups of users received the upgrade at different times. To simplify the upgrade process, we used Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (Configuration Manager) for our initial deployment. Gaining control over Office upgrades and updates However, when we upgraded our users to Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus, both deployment and update management became much easier. In the past, this complexity created a lot of administrative overhead. We need to be sure to upgrade the right devices for the right users.
Also, a few of our users need to keep previous versions of Office running, and some users have multiple devices with different versions on each one. In Microsoft Digital, we serve more than 150,000 on-site and remote users with varying needs for how frequently new features are installed on their devices. Microsoft is a large enterprise, and deploying a new version of Microsoft Office to our global user base and managing monthly updates can be a complex process.