Patching Office 365 w/Configmgr

[surfincow]

Hello,

 

We've deployed Office 365 to our users and I'm running into an issue when it comes to patching them with feature upgrades (security updates work just fine).

 

O365 was originally deployed under current branch, but we've decided to go deferred instead. The GPO is set to use Deferred and also Office 365 client management is enabled. In the setup.xml file the parameter to update via configmgr was specified.

 

The problem that I am seeing is that when the deferred channel updates are deployed, the machines don't detect or install them. When looking at the specific software update, none of the machines show "required" for the deferred updates, but rather for the "current" channel updates.

 

I came across an article here: https://www.systemcenterdudes.com/managing-office-365-updates-with-sccm/that states the following:

 

As per our testing, the GPO as no impact to change the Channel for Office 365 when managed by SCCM.

When SCCM manage the updates, it will support only the Channel specified at the installation time.

Example : You install Office 365 with Current Channel. You have a GPO setting Channel to Deferred. You deploy release updates with SCCM for Current and Deferred Channel, the client will only see the update for Current as necessary. Deferred will never be applied.

 

This seems a little odd that you can only patch to what the update type is set to during installation. Has anyone else ran into this or are you able to change clients from one upgrade channel to another and still patch them through configmgr?

 

Thanks

[CCoyle]

Not sure if this is related, but my O365 dashboard is reporting 25 different versions installed with various channels.  I don't know if this is accurate, but I'm getting errors trying to deploy patches for O365.  We have the GPO set, the client settings are enabled and SW update point is modified.  Not sure where to go.

 

[meofcourse]

I haven't tested this but as per Here you will want to check the cdn location here:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration

 

[meofcourse]

 

22 hours ago, meofcourse said:

I haven't tested this but as per Here you will want to check the cdn location here:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration

 

Just following up on this as I needed to test for my environment as well.

To change from Deferred Channel to First Release for Deferred Channel, make the following registry key and ensure that the channel is set via Group Policy to "FirstReleaseDeferred". 

Path: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration

Key: CDNBaseURL

Old Value: http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/7ffbc6bf-bc32-4f92-8982-f9dd17fd3114

New Value: http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/b8f9b850-328d-4355-9145-c59439a0c4cf

I am not 100% sure if the group policy setting is required, although it appears that the office update client looks to group policy, while the ConfigMgr client looks to the registry key.

Note: In order to get the CDNBaseURL, see the content location of the patch you wish to go to (see image)