Office hotfixes to be delivered on a defined schedule in the form of Cumulative Updates
Office hotfixes to be delivered on a defined schedule in the form of Cumulative Updates
Microsoft Office is moving away from the current weekly hotfix release model to a scheduled delivery model. Under the new model, Office hotfixes are released every two months in the form of Cumulative Updates (CU) . The primary goal is to deliver high quality fixes in a predictable timeframe. Other hotfix teams at Microsoft (SQL Server and Exchange, for instance) have also adopted periodic delivery mechanisms for hotfixes. The first Office cumulative update will release in August, 2008.
With the new model, customers will still be able to request emergency fixes with an accelerated turn-around time. These fixes are termed Critical On-demand hotfixes (COD) , to distinguish them from the cumulative updates that are released every two months. Below is some more detail on the new approach.
Cumulative update (CU) features
Hotfixes are released every 2 months.
Available hotfixes include:
· Fixes for issues that meet Office hotfix acceptance criteria. These criteria include workaround availability, customer impact, reproducibility, the complexity of the code that must be changed, and other considerations. These criteria have not changed.
· Any critical on-demand hotfixes released to date (see below).
· Any critical security or non-security updates released publicly to date.
As is currently the case, hotfixes will be released in the form of “packages” that include fixes for customer-identified problems (where a “package” may contain one or more fixes). Customers accepting hotfixes will not be required to install anything more than they install today in order to take advantage of a cumulative update.
Cumulative updates apply to all versions of Office that are currently in mainstream support. (For general information on Microsoft product support, visit the Microsoft Support Lifecycle web site.)
Critical on-demand (COD) hotfix features
A critical on-demand hotfix is available to address critical problems that cannot be handled via the cumulative update delivery cycle. COD fixes are limited to emergency situations, for example, one in which the issue is blocking normal business operations for the customer, and/or for which there is no effective workaround.
No impact on Public Update or Service Pack releases
No changes to Office Public Updates, including security updates, or Office Service Packs are entailed by Office Cumulative Updates. Public updates will continue to include previously-released hotfixes for the affected binary or binaries, as well as all fixes released in the most recent Service Pack. For more information on Office’s update model, see previous post from April, 2008.
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
You may already be familiar with the term Cumulative Updates for other Microsoft products, and now theyAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Nonostante questa notizia non abbia un diretto impatto sugli aggiornamenti di sicurezza di Office, ilAnonymous
January 01, 2003
일반적인 소프트웨어의 update는 설치 파일을 실행한 후, 필요한 경우 머신을 재시작하는 과정을 거치게 됩니다. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSSAnonymous
January 01, 2003
"The first Office cumulative update will release in August, 2008. " Any news about it `?Anonymous
January 01, 2003
As discussed by the Office Sustained Engineering group cumulative updates for all Office Products includingAnonymous
January 01, 2003
일반적인 소프트웨어의 update는 설치 파일을 실행한 후, 필요한 경우 머신을 재시작하는 과정을 거치게 됩니다. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSSAnonymous
January 01, 2003
As discussed by the Office Sustained Engineering group cumulative updates for all Office Products includingAnonymous
January 01, 2003
일반적인 소프트웨어의 update는 설치 파일을 실행한 후, 필요한 경우 머신을 재시작하는 과정을 거치게 됩니다. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSSAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Thanks for the explanation, Chris. I'll be happy to wait. A good reason is all I was looking for ;-)Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The first (August 2008) cumulative update package for Office 2003 Service Pack 3 was written up in KB957023. It's now September, and no link to the hotfix package is anywhere to be found. Emailing Customer Support directly does no good - they say nothing is available.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
We had a regression in MSO that caused us to pull thoses fixes. They will be re-released as part of the Dec CU.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
As discussed by the Office Sustained Engineering group cumulative updates for all Office Products includingAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Cumulative updates for Office are similar to the update rollups released by other Microsoft teams, including SQL Server and Exchange. Under the cumulative update model, hotfixes will be released once every two months, and each CU release will be accompanied by a Knowledge Base article describing the contents.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
As discussed by the Office Sustained Engineering group cumulative updates for all Office Products includingAnonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Also, is SP3 the last service pack for Office 2003? Office 2003 is only 6 months now in mainstream support.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
May I ask about when the remaining October 28, 2008 Cumulative Update releases for Office 2007 [client] will be available? The articles and hotfixes for the Mso.dll patch have disappeared. The article for Xmleditverb is still there, but the hotfix link is dead. I thought the equivalents might appear with the November security updates, but no dice.