Changes to Microsoft AutoUpdate deferral options

Microsoft began offering curated deferral channels for AutoUpdate a little over two years ago. These feeds allowed MacAdmins to delay updates to Office apps for a set number of days, without having to run a custom manifest server themselves.

Unfortunately these deferral channels have recently stopped working, leaving many MacAdmins scrambling to adjust.

Thankfully the community has engaged Microsoft and have pushed for a solution.

Read on for the details on why this happened and how to adjust your configuration.

Paul Bowden

Paul Bowden, the Principal Program Manager, Office for Mac at Microsoft, has been an amazing advocate for MacAdmins for years. His engagement with the community on the MacAdmins Slack is unprecedented and has served as an example for other companies.

Unfortunately a month ago Paul’s manager let us know that Paul is out on leave and his projects are on hold. This includes the https://macadmins.software site that has been such an amazing resource, along with the curated deferral channels for MAU.

New preference keys

Numerous MacAdmins reached out to Microsoft when the curated deferral channels stopped bing updated.

Slack member KDawg was the first to receive details in a support ticket about new preference keys available starting in MAU 4.68.1 and Office apps 16.82. Steve Dagley later had the new keys confirmed in his own ticket.

The engineering team has created a few new preference keys which are supposed to achieve the same as what Paul’s deferred CDN channels were providing.

We still would prefer that our customers use the CURRENT and PREVIEW channels, but we also hear your feedback.

Similar to Forcing Microsoft Office update deadlines with MAU, these new keys appear to let you set a uniform deferral length for all applications, different deferrals for each application and the ability to pin apps to a specific version.

As a reminder, the preference domain for MAU is com.microsoft.autoupdate2 and is best managed with a configuration profile deployed via MDM.

Uniform Deferral

To defer all apps by the same number of days, add the OptionalUpdatesDeferralsDays key with an integer value in days to the top-level of your configuration profile:

<key>OptionalUpdatesDeferralsDays</key>
<integer>3</integer>

Individual Deferrals

To defer individual apps by different lengths, use a OptionalUpdatesDeferrals dictionary that contains a nested DeferralDays dictionary. Individual apps are specified by their “Application ID” as like other preferences in the MAU domain.

<key>OptionalUpdatesDeferrals</key>
<dict>
	<key>DeferralDays</key>
	<dict>
		<key>MSWD2019</key>
		<integer>14</integer>
		<key>PPT32019</key>
		<integer>7</integer>
		<key>XCEL2019</key>
		<integer>28</integer>
		<key>OPIM2019</key>
		<integer>14</integer>
		<key>ONMC2019</key>
		<integer>3</integer>
	</dict>
</dict>

Version Pinning

To pin apps to specific versions, use the same OptionalUpdatesDeferrals dictionary as above but replace the nested dictionary with DeferralVersions.

<key>OptionalUpdatesDeferrals</key>
<dict>
	<key>DeferralVersions</key>
	<dict>
		<key>MSWD2019</key>
		<string>16.81</string>
		<key>PPT32019</key>
		<string>16.81</string>
		<key>XCEL2019</key>
		<string>16.81</string>
		<key>OPIM2019</key>
		<string>16.81</string>
		<key>ONMC2019</key>
		<string>16.81</string>
	</dict>
</dict>

At this time it is unclear how long MAU will allow an old version to remain pinned.

Notes

• Adjust days value to your preference, maximum value is 28
• If you have both OptionalUpdatesDeferralsDays and OptionalUpdatesDeferrals, OptionalUpdatesDeferrals will take precedence for specified app(s)
• Set Channel to “Current” (from “Custom”)
• If you need to exclude the Outlook weekly updates, then you would need to set the channel to CurrentThrottle

Documentation

At this point Microsoft has not published documentation for these new preference keys publicly. The closest we get are the Feb. 2024 release notes for MAU which simply state:

• Additional support for custom configurations.

Custom Manifest Server

Of course if these new options are not enough, you can still run a Custom Manifest Server and have full control.

Further discussion

Please join us in the #microsoft-autoupdate channel of the MacAdmins Slack to continue collaborating with the community as we navigate these changes.