About the MiWorkspace Office 365 Installer

This article describes the behavior of the MiWorkspace Windows Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus installer.

Environment

Windows Platform as a Service

Procedure

The MiWorkspace installer for Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus has several behaviors that IT administrators should be aware of. These behaviors are described below. Please be aware of these behaviors prior to deployment of Office 365 ProPlus in your organization.

Previous Versions

Previous versions of Microsoft Office will be removed automatically as part of the installation process for Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus.

An exception to the previous version behavior are the Microsoft Project and Visio 2010 and 2013 applications. Presence of Microsoft Project or Visio 2010 or 2013 will prevent the installation of Office 365 ProPlus. In Software Center, users attempting to install the MiWorkspace Office 365 ProPlus deployment may see a message indicating that installation requirements are not met if either Microsoft Project or Visio 2010 or 2013 is installed. More information about the interaction of Office 365 ProPlus deployments with Project and Visio is available here - MiWorkspace Windows Office 365 ProPlus Deployment and Microsoft Project and Visio.

Computer Restart

The install process for Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus may prompt the user to restart the computer at the conclusion of the installation process. The computer restart is required to complete the removal of previous versions of Office.

Licensing and Activation

Microsoft Office 365 licenses are assigned to users instead of computers. With Microsoft Office 2016, Office was activated when the computer contacted a KMS server and obtained a license authorization. With Microsoft Office 365, Office is activated when an Office application is launched by a user with an Azure Active Directory account that has an active license assignment.

The exception to this is device licensing using device-based licensing. Device-based licensing can be configured to support use cases for users who will not have an Azure Active Directory account with an assigned Office 365 license.

More information about Office 365 license and activation scenarios is available here - About Microsoft 365 Licensing.

Updates and Upgrades

MiWorkspace will deploy two types of changes to Office 365 ProPlus. These are updates and upgrades. Updates are typically deployed on a monthly basis. Upgrades are typically deployed by MiWorkspace one or two times per year.

Monthly Updates

Updates for Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus are deployed by MiWorkspace each month. The issues fixed in security updates are described here - Release notes for Microsoft Office security updates. Monthly updates may also fix functionality issues in Office 365. The update history for Office 365 is available here - Update history for Microsoft 365 Apps (listed by date).

Upgrades

Upgrades to Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus are deployed by MiWorkspace once or twice per year. Upgrades add (and in some cases) remove functionality from Office 365. The release cadence for upgrades varies based on the update channel of the Office product that’s installed. In MiWorkspace, Office 365 is deployed using the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel. Detailed information about the Microsoft 365 update channels is available here - Overview of update channels for Microsoft 365 Apps.