Best way to keep Office updated, Jamf App Catalog or App Store

I use a policy to deploy a pkg of each Office app I want to install. I then deploy and configure the Microsoft Updater application to handle updates. Jamf Pro has a schema included to configure it. You can choose the update channel as well as other preferences. When updates are available the application appears and asks the end user to close the app and update or wait until the deadline when it’s forced.

https://learn.jamf.com/en-US/bundle/technical-paper-microsoft-office-current/page/Microsoft_Office_Updates.html

I use installomator for initial deploy during jamf setup manager to make sure these are on before anyone logs in. Then I have a profile for MAU like comment above to handle updates. Seems to work pretty well and keeps things updated.  

Hello 

Hello Msandee, can you help me with the profile of MAU ??

You can place the packages for the office apps in the prestage. This will install the packages as a part of the enrollment. Keep in mind you want to ensure only the absolutely essential things install with the prestage as this bogs down the enrollment process.

When updates come out, you will need to manually update the packages in the prestage but I would only do this quarterly or so and allow MAU or Jamfs App Catalog to handle updating the apps.

​@yugandhar You could probably get away with → Application & Custom Settings → Preference domain: com.microsoft.autoupdate2: 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

      <key>ChannelName</key>

      <string>Current</string>

      <key>HowToCheck</key>

      <string>AutomaticDownload</string> 

</dict>

</plist>

These are default settings for MAU anyway, but if you don’t want normal users changing these, config profile.

MAU has a lot of settings you can change/set in a profile though: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-apps/mac/mau-preferences

Hope this helps!

This will automatically download the updates right.  In my case, I need a script to update all the apps at a time, in the evening time.

I haven’t done scheduled updates for Microsoft stuff. I’m in EDU and have a lot of labs, but haven’t found the default automatic downloads behavior to be disruptive. But you could probably set MAU to not check and then have an msupdate script that runs on a schedule. I haven’t used or tested this, but looks promising: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-apps/mac/update-office-for-mac-using-msupdate

MAU is dang good now. Enforceable deadlines, nice notification GUI. 

Base versioning is done with pkg. Updates with MAU. Except Edge - do that through Jamf App Catalog.

Be aware that there is currently an issue with MAU sometimes injecting updates into the wrong applications (e.g. it might install OneDrive into the Microsoft Outlook application bundle). MS is aware and telling admins who file new reports that a fix is expected next week (the week of 2025-11-10)