<html><body><p><font size="2">IBM BigFix Patch will be making changes to Office 365 content. This is in alignment with Microsoft Office 365 changes that include a change of channel names, as indicated in the following table. </font><p><font size="2"> </font><p><font size="2">New Name Old Name</font><p><font size="2">Monthly Channel Current Channel</font><p><font size="2">Semi-annual Channel (Targeted) First Release for Deferred Channel</font><p><font size="2">Semi-annual Channel Deferred Channel</font><p><font size="2"> </font><p><font size="2">Microsoft announced that the name change begins on September 12, 2017.</font><p><font size="2">BigFix will be updating existing tasks for users to set endpoints to the new channel. The Fixlet IDs of existing content will remain unchanged. Moving forward, users will receive updates as per usual and the change is in name only.</font><p><font size="2"> </font><p><font size="2">What actions should I take?</font><font size="2"><br></font><font size="2">You can use the tasks that BigFix Patch will be releasing to set your endpoints to the new channel.</font><p><font size="2"> </font><p><font size="2">Other changes for Office 365</font><font size="2"><br></font><font size="2">Aside from the name change, Microsoft is also reducing the update cadence of Semi-annual Channel (Targeted) from 2-3 times a year to twice a year, in March and September.</font><p><font size="2">The support duration for the semi-annual feature update releases of Office 365 ProPlus will now be longer, at 18 months instead of 12 months, starting from the initial release.</font><p><font size="2">For more information about these changes, see </font><a href="http://bit.ly/2vFdHZa" target="_blank"><font size="2">http://bit.ly/2vFdHZa</font></a><font size="2">.</font><p><font size="2"> </font><p><font size="2">Reference:</font><font size="2"><br></font><font size="2">To refer to the Microsoft article Overview of the upcoming changes to Office 365 ProPlus update management , see, </font><a href="http://bit.ly/2vFdHZa" target="_blank"><font size="2">http://bit.ly/2vFdHZa</font></a><font size="2">.</font><p><p><font size="2">Application Engineering Team</font><p><font size="2">IBM BigFix</font><BR>
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