Retirement of the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel option in the Office Deployment Service
🚨
Major Update: This post contains a significant change that may impact your organisation.
[Introduction]
We’re retiring the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel option from the Office Deployment Service in the _Microsoft 365 apps admin center_. This retirement supports our ongoing efforts to simplify update channel management for Microsoft 365 Apps and ensure customers benefit from the most secure, up-to-date experience. We will continue to invest in the Monthly Enterprise Channel and Current Channel, which offer more frequent security and feature updates.
[When this will happen]
We will begin retiring this option on April 6, 2026, and expect to complete the retirement by April 11, 2026.
[How this affects your organization]
Who is affected
- Organizations that use the Office Deployment Service or Office Customization Service to create deployment configurations for Microsoft 365 Apps.
What will happen
- The Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel will be removed from the list of available update channel options when creating new deployment configurations.
- Deployment configurations you have already created that use Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel will continue to retain that value when viewed or edited; however, it will not be available as a selectable option for new configurations.
- Only Current Channel and Monthly Enterprise Channel will be available for new configuration creation.
- There is no impact to devices currently configured for Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel.
[What you can do to prepare]
No admin action is required for this retirement. You may choose to:
- Notify relevant admins or deployment teams of this upcoming change.
- Update internal documentation if it references the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel as a selectable option.
- Review your existing configurations in the Office Deployment Service if you plan to transition to a different update channel going forward.
- If desired, use this Microsoft Learn resource to plan channel migration: Change the Microsoft 365 Apps update channel for devices in your organization | Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn.
[Compliance considerations]
No compliance considerations identified. Review as appropriate for your organization.