Enable Efficient Remote Learning with the most current updates for Microsoft 365 Apps

Recently we’ve heard from our educators around the world wanting to make sure they have the most current capabilities to support remote learning and real-time collaboration for educators, students, and faculties. We always listen to feedback to improve the Microsoft 365 Apps experience. To help ensure you can leverage these improvements, we recommend the Current Channel for feature updates to Microsoft 365 Apps.

Current Channel provides new and updated features for the as soon as they’re ready. Feature updates are typically available once a month near the end of the month. Current Channel will also update on Patch Tuesday with security fixes, and performance or stability improvements as needed. Customers on Current Channel have reported higher satisfaction than those receiving semi-annual feature updates.

Move to Current Channel through Microsoft 365 admin center

If your tenant isn’t currently on Current Channel, you can easily change the update channel by signing into the Microsoft 365 admin center with your admin account. Navigate to the sidebar: Show all > Settings > Org settings > Services > Office software download settings. Once you arrive to the Office software download settings, select Current Channel and Save, as pictured below

Microsoft 365 admin center experience for channel set up for new and existing devices that get updates directly from CDN with no admin policies

This setting applies to all new and existing installs in your tenant that are getting updates automatically from the Office Content Delivery Network without any admin policy override on devices. This means if you're already using another method, such as Group Policy or Microsoft Endpoint Manager to manage how your users get feature updates, then the settings you select in the Microsoft 365 admin center won't apply.

Honoring Current Channel as default channel

If you haven’t selected a channel for your tenant, the update channel selection in Microsoft 365 admin center has been defaulted to Current Channel. This month, we’ll begin honoring that default. If you don’t want your tenant to stay on Current Channel, you can always choose a different update channel in the Microsoft 365 admin center. In this case, we recommend you consider Monthly Enterprise Channel for frequent feature updates on a predictable schedule. You can learn more about Monthly Enterprise Channel and other update channels here.

How to update your devices to Current Channel using other methods

If you're already using another method, such as Group Policy or Microsoft Endpoint Manager to manage how your users get feature updates, we encourage you to use your existing admin tools to update devices to Current Channel. More detailed instructions for existing admin tools can be found here. To ensure teachers and students have a consistent experience, we recommend you select the same update channel through both the admin center and any existing management tools.

Thank you for being a Microsoft 365 customer

Mike Tholfsen
Microsoft Education Product Manager

@mtholfsen