Patching Office 2016

Question

We use KACE to patch our workstations, and I'm noticing a pattern when applying patches to machines with Office 2016 installed. We install patches silently in the middle of the day, and allow to user to snooze the reboot for up to 12 hours. The user should not even notice anything going on in the background.

This has worked fine for years. Now, with Office 2016 it appears that the Security Updates are forcing Outlook and Skype for Business to close as they get installed. This is unacceptable.

I've narrowed it down to these 3 patches this month:

Security Update for Microsoft Outlook 2016 32-Bit Edition (KB3178664)

Security Update for Microsoft Office 2016 32-Bit Edition (KB3178703)

Security Update for Microsoft Office 2016 32-Bit Edition (KB3178702)

Anyone else seeing the same thing? Solutions? Ideas?

Answer

Two ideas: (1) Use scripting to install independent of patching, or (2) Change user expectations

For (1), I'm assuming there's some way to invoke the patches and disable the closing of Outlook/Skype but I don't know if this is possible.

For (2), I might put Office 2016 patches in a separate patch schedule which includes a custom message like "Your Office programs are about to be updated, please close Outlook and Skype before clicking 'OK'"

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