Office 2016 Update ver. 15.20

[mhasman]

Office 2016 Update ver. 15.20 shows up under "Office Insider Program" updates. Status is "Recommended".
Question, please - is it a better or final release? Should I distribute that one or wait?
Thanks!

[SGill]

It's still a beta...I would wait until it drops for real. Deploying an Insider update would likely cause issues on your clients not enrolled in the program.

15.20 looked good in my testing, however....

[p644a1]

15.20 fixes the broken Kerberos issue with outlook, now it does a key refresh once when you keys is going to expire .

[ryanstayloradob]

Is it me, or does Microsoft fail to mention if the update is an Insider Preview or an official release?

[SGill]

It could be made clearer for sure. I just ran an un-enrolled version to see that we are still at 15.19.1 as of today.

[mhasman]

@ryanstayloradobe For me those updates are available only when I check "Join the Office Insider Program..."

[dpertschi]

According to MS engineers on the ms-office Slack channel; 15.20 will go public next Tues 3/15.

There is a lot of good discussion and information on there regarding the new MAU, the insider channels, VLA, serializer, etc.

[mhasman]

@dpertschi Thank you!

[chad_fox]

I've noticed in this release that it switches the font back to default (Calibri) and also your Autocorrect settings.

Feedback has been sent to Microsoft regarding the issue.

[ryanstayloradob]

@mhasman, My systems are set to receive the insider updates as well. I'd just like to see Microsoft tell us it's an Insider Preview build in AutoUpdate. The way it's being shown now, it looks like a regular update.

[bpavlov]

Give them feedback on Slack! [www.macadmins.org](www.macadmins.org)

[mhasman]

@dpertschi Tuesday 3/15 is here, Update is not here yet :)

[dpertschi]

Ohhhhhh I see, one of them: "it's 12:05 AM, it's not there, something is wrong, what do we do now"

From a MS Engineer on Slack

Update on the 15.20 release. There are some lingering quality issues causing a delay on today's production release. Unfortunately, it's not looking good. We're making a go/no-go decision in 3 hours. I'll provide an update later.

[mhasman]

Thank you for the update Darrin!

[mhasman]

Here we are! 15.20 is available
Anybody have download URL, please?

[bpavlov]

From Slack:
Paul Bowden says:

The stars are not aligning for the full 15.20 production release today :disappointed: ….the switch to WordMail for Outlook compose has caused some accessibility issues that we just can’t force on everyone. As such, here’s the plan: 1. Tomorrow - release delta and full updaters for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote (NOT Outlook) to the Production channel. The build will be 15.20.0 [160315] 2. Tomorrow - release delta and full updates for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote to the Insiders (aka External) channel. The build will be 15.20.0 [160315]. Given that Insiders are already running Outlook 15.20, this update will at least give you the latest fixes including a nasty crashing issue with POP3 accounts. 3. We’ll be holding off on updating the suite and standalone installers for now - they’ll remain at 15.19.1. If we can fix the accessibility issues in the next week or so, we’ll look to release installers with a 15.20.1 moniker. If the changes are more extensive, we might need to skip 15.20 altogether for installers. This has a direct impact on updating the VL build - best case, we update it around 4/8 with 15.20.1, worst case is that we don’t update it until 15.21 on 5/1. This is certainly not the greatest of news. I’ll let you know if things change.

Keep checking:
http://macadmins.software

[mhasman]

No 15.20 update for Outlook? Why? Unbelievable...
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3138327

[Kaltsas]

I believe there are some outstanding bugs they wanted to resolve before release (from my experience with the 15.20 insider build anyway). I've got a lot of text display quirks going on with Outlook 15.20 that I would not want to just foist upon the rest of my colleague. We'll either see an outlook 15.20.1 release or I think more likely a 15.21 release for all the applications.

[mhasman]

Thanks, Alexander!

[CAJensen01]

Sure would be nice if they could keep to a consistent versioning scheme..

15.18
15.19.1
15.21.16041100

...

[Kaltsas]

This is a bug on jamfs part. Casper is not looking at CFBundleShortVersionString like they should be. Microsoft recently changed their versioning (CFBundleVersion for all iterations (both released and unreleased)) so CFBundleShortVersionString and CFBundleVersion no longer match. Which is fine and follows Apples guidelines, casper is supposed to look at CFBundleShortVersionString and fall back to CFBundleVersion but that is not currently happening.

[CAJensen01]

Yup, looks like you're right. Of course it would also be nice if Microsoft could do things consistently.

[bpavlov]

Yes, it's frustrating. But it's commendable that Microsoft is trying to do things the way Apple recommends. Yes, they were consistent previously. But you could argue it was consistently against best practice ('wrong'). This change just shows an obvious bug in the way JAMF is looking at the versioning of apps which they can hopefully rectify. And when they do I expect it will be a major change because a lot of smart groups will probably need to be updated to reflect the proper versioning.

[Kaltsas]

I have a case open with JAMF, TAM filed a defect. Contact jamf to get moar traction on the bug.