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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.
As announced on the SharePoint Team blog, this morning we released to web three new important updates that affect SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Project Server 2007, Search Server 2008, Search Server 2008 Express and Project Professional 2007.
The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) applies to:
The Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) applies to:
The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) applies to:
The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers contains the new Enterprise Search features that were shipped in Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express that were are not already in SharePoint Server 2007; this includes Federated Search capability, a unified administration dashboard and several Search core platform performance updates. Read more about the new Search features here.
There are several Content Deployment updates included in both the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers and the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. These updates address many of the top customer reported issues with Content Deployment. Read more about the Content Deployment updates here.
The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) and the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) include several usability and performance updates for Project Server 2007 and Project Professional 2007 in addition to addressing the top customer reported issues. Read more about the Project Server and Project Professional updates here and in this White Paper.
All three updates contain fixes and product performance updates driven by customer feedback which have resulted in significant platform performance improvements in several areas. There has also been a focus on several core platform components, including improvements to upgrade, future patching and servicing, several targeted updates for workflow, the Business Data Catalog and inter-farm server authentication with Kerberos. For more detailed information please read the KB articles listed further on in this post.
We strongly recommend that you install the updates that apply to you as soon as your patching and maintenance schedules permit.
The updates can be downloaded from the links below:
Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) - x86
Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) - x64
Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) - x86
Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) - x64
Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) - x86
* The updates are applicable to all shipping languages.
Installation Instructions are available from the links below:
Deploy Software Updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Deploy Software Updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007 - This article also applies to Project Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.
Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Search Server 2008)
Related Knowledge Base Articles are available from the links below:
Description of the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695)
Fixes Included in the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB953749)
Description of the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)
Fixes Included in the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB953750)
Description of the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547)
Fixes Included in the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB953751)
Please read and familiarize yourself with the installation instructions before you start.
For reference, the following products require the following updates to be applied.
If you are running SharePoint Server 2007 you should install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) first and the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) second.
If you are running Project Server 2007 you should install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) first and the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) second. You should also then install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) on all Project Professional 2007 client PCs.
If you are running Search Server 2008 or Search Server 2008 Express you should install the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) first and the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) second.
If you are running Project Professional 2007 you should install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547).
It is strongly recommended that you install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 and Office Servers Service Pack 1 before installing the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) and the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695).
The installation process will incur server and farm downtime that you will need to plan for – updates should be installed on all servers in a farm.
On Tuesday, July 8th, 2008, Office released two critical non-security updates to Outlook and two updates to the Outlook Junk Email Filter. The Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 (KB953432) consolidates hotfixes to address several issues, including an issue that prevents users from opening certain JPEG attachments after installing the MS08-015 security update. The Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (KB952142) also consolidates hotfixes to address several issues, including an issue that causes Outlook to hang and behave oddly if the MS08-015 security update was installed before Outlook was started for the first time. We recommend that all users of Outlook 2003 and 2007 install the appropriate update for your version of Outlook. In addition to these updates, Office also released Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB953465) and Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Junk Email Filter (KB953463).