ITMS 8.x - Office 365 updates failing with 1603 error code.

Products

• Patch Management Solution for Windows

Issue/Introduction

Office 365 updates failing with 1603 error code.

Symantec Management Agent logs show. "Process finished with status Success, extended status: ","OfficeUpdater::Office2016Update::performUpdateScenario","OfficeUpdater.exe","6412","Informational"
 

Environment

ITMS 8.x with Office 365 support rollup installed.

Cause

What happens is that an office application is running or a file that belongs to an office application is in use when the Update is started.

This includes Office365 telemetry.

Patch Management provides the updates to the ClickToRun service and initiates the update, but it is unable to update immediately.

Resolution

Microsoft has a process in place to handle this situation. Every PC with Office 365 installed has a scheduled task called "Office Automatic Updates" that will try to finish the update process on a schedule.

Reference:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Overview-of-the-update-process-for-Office-365-ProPlus-936cda26-41f9-45b5-a1f9-f9e1f485d23b

To show in-Office notifications that an update can be triggered add the following command line switches to the OfficeUpdater.exe command line in the Software Update policy for an Office 365 update.

"--showui=true" and "--promptuser=true"

Example:

swuenv.bat && call "%InstallToolsPath_832C527C-B9C9-46FB-B1F1-2F35434FF90D%\OfficeUpdater.exe" 
--guid=7786f3e7-6a62-b669-36c0-e64d6da8fc7c --updatetoversion=16.0.11425.20202 --loglevel=3 --showui=true

 

If you don't want the users to see a popup during update, you can configure update settings for Office 365 ProPlus by using Group Policy.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/configure-update-settings-for-office-365-proplus

Here is "Administrative Template files": https://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=49030

Checked both possible configuration setting:
UpdateDeadline="04/18/2020 09:20"  - Exact date time
UpdateDeadline="3"   -  Days count

After deadline time the notification message with countdown timer will popup and user can defer it, if not ready to close the Office application(s).

Otherwise, the application(s) will be closed, and after the update process, will be opened in the last state.