Microsoft 365 apps will now automatically update themselves

• Microsoft releases hundreds of feature updates and security patches to its office applications throughout the year.
• The optimization will be automatically rolled out to qualifying consumers.

Microsoft has released an update to its suite of office and productivity tools that will assist IT teams in keeping programmes up to date. A new feature for Microsoft 365 now allows IT, administrators, to deploy upgrades to business laptops and PCs when they are idle or locked down, according to a company blog post.

If an old application is running, the functionality will close it (when it is safe to do so), apply the update, and restore the instance to its original state. This entire process appears to take about four seconds.

Updates to Microsoft 365

Microsoft releases hundreds of feature updates and security patches to its office applications throughout the year.

The issue for organisations is that staff are unlikely to go out of their way to manually install updates, whereas forced update methods often require some level of inconvenience.

Microsoft said the new “update under lock” capability will help businesses guarantee their deployments are as secure and up-to-date as possible without interrupting employees’ work.

“Are you or your end-users annoyed with update notifications? Do you struggle to reach compliance?” asked the firm.

“Well fear not, because Microsoft has developed an optimization that applies a pending Microsoft 365 apps update while a machine is in idle or locked mode, even if apps are running.”

“Update under lock helps you reach compliance within your timeframes without disrupting your internal users, and potentially reduces the need for abrupt forced updates, making updates more reliable by saving app state before closing.”

Although the collaboration platform Teams has its own update methodology, the new capability applies to virtually all existing Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, for example) installed on Windows devices.

TechRadar Pro has contacted Microsoft if the capability will be added to macOS in the future.

The optimization will be automatically rolled out to qualifying consumers, living “under the hood to make your life easier,” Microsoft explained.

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