Office 365 Client Updates via WSUS

Many of you have already seen the announcement that Configuration Manager can now be set up to sync Office 365 ProPlus updates directly. This scenario is a direct response to requests for control of distributing these updates, and is an improvement on the past model (wherein Office 365 ProPlus updates circumvented Microsoft Update and WSUS altogether); however, there may be a nonzero cost to WSUS administrators that do not use Configuration Manager. This post discusses how to mitigate that cost if you are affected by the change.

 

The Office 365 Client category now appears in the WSUS Products and Classifications pane:

 

If you’ve configured WSUS to sync this content, then you’ll see new updates in the console:

Deploying these updates without Configuration Manager is not supported, so the content described above is essentially useless to a WSUS standalone administrator. Depending on your situation, we recommend that you take one of the following actions:

  1. Deselect the Office 365 Client product so that WSUS does not sync this content from Microsoft Update. 

  2. For those running Small Business Server or other flavors that do not allow product filtering, decline all updates for the Office 365 Client product, which can be identified by the update title.

 

Please let us know if there are any questions on this new content in WSUS.