Microsoft announced today (here) that beginning today, Office 365 Administrators have new controls available to determine which software versions are available for their end users.  This setting will take effect on February 23rd, so you have a few weeks to decide which options you are going to select.

Note: This only applies to new software downloads on a go-forward basis. Previously downloaded copies of Office 365 ProPlus (2013 edition) will still be prompted to upgrade to the 2016 version unless administrative action is taken prior to February 23rd. See my blog post (here) for more details on this auto-upgrade and how to postpone it if you are not quite ready for it.

In the announcement, Microsoft also announced that the naming convention used to describe how frequently security updates get pushed down will be renamed from ‘current branch for business’ to ‘Deferred Channel build.’ (Although as you can see in the screen shot it still uses the ‘Current Branch for Business’ name.

Okay – I missed the “Memo” this time – what can I do to prevent this from happening again in the future?

If you’ve configured your users to get updates from a location on your internal network, then the upgrade to Office 2016 is under your control. What if you missed the memo on how to do this and you want to make sure you stay informed so that things like this don’t happen again? I recommend having someone in your organization stay focused on things like this by creating a position to discovery of upcoming changes, or hire a Cloud Architect to do this for you. If you do not have budget for a new position, or your existing staff is overwhelmed, then you may benefit from Cloud Advisory services from Patriot Consulting (visit our website by clicking here for more information).

Or you can always email us at Hello @ PatriotConsultingTech.com