This post will show how you can use the compliance settings in SCCM to change the update channel in Office 365 ProPlus by changing CDNBaseUrl in the registry.  This is useful if you want to change some clients from Current Channel to Deferred Channel or Deferred Channel to Current Channel.

This post assumes you are running ConfigMgr Current Branch 1610 and have the Client Settings set to “Enable management of the Office 365 Client Agent” in the Software Updates section, and have configured ConfigMgr 1610 to deploy updates for Office 365. More info about that can be read here Manage Office 365 ProPlus updates with Configuration Manager

In the ConfigMgr console, create a new Configuration Item

Give it a name and click Next.

Click on New so you can add a new setting.

I have clicked on Browse near the Hive Name and connected to another machine with Office 365 installed and browsed to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration\CDNBaseUrl

Select CDNBaseURL and select The selected registry value must exist on client devices.

Click OK and it should look like this

Click on the Compliance Rules tab and click New.

Now where you have the setting selected, change the “Equals the following values” to the update channel you would like to change to. For example, mine was previously set to Deferred channel, so I selected the URL for Current Channel and pasted it in.

For reference I have copied the URL’s from Change the update channel after you enable Office 365 clients to receive updates from Configuration Manager and pasted them below:

• Current Channel:
  CDNBaseUrl = http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/492350f6-3a01-4f97-b9c0-c7c6ddf67d60
• Deferred Channel:
  CDNBaseUrl = http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/7ffbc6bf-bc32-4f92-8982-f9dd17fd3114
• First Release for Current Channel:
  CDNBaseUrl = http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/64256afe-f5d9-4f86-8936-8840a6a4f5be
• First Release for Deferred Channel:
  CDNBaseUrl = http://officecdn.microsoft.com/pr/b8f9b850-328d-4355-9145-c59439a0c4cf

Click on OK.

Click Next.

Click Next.

Click Next.

Click Close.

Now we will create the Configuration Baseline and add the previously created Configuration Item.

Click on Add, then select Configuration Item.

Select the previously created Configuration Item and click Add.

Now we will deploy it to a collection to test it.

Make sure the correct Configuration Item is selected, and Remediate noncompliant rules when supported. Choose a test collection to deploy it to (my All Workstations is in a lab, not a production environment)

Now on a machine that is in the collection where you deployed the baseline to, after the machine gets the policy you should be able to see the Baseline in the Configurations tab of the ConfigMgr client properties. Click on Evaluate and wait for the Compliant tab to change from Unknown to Compliant.

One of the cool things in ConfigMgr 1610 is the Office 365 dashboard. This is found under Office 365 Client Management in the Software Library node. Previously it said it had 2 Office 365 Client channels set to Deferred Channel.

 

After initiating a Hardware Inventory cycle on the machine where I deployed the baseline to, because I changed CDNBaseUrl to the Current Channel URL, you can see the Office 365 Client Management dashboard has now changed from having 2 Deferred Channels, to 1 Deferred Channel, and 1 Current Channel.

Also after initiating the software updates deployment scan cycle, you can see that Software Center updates have changed from Deferred Channel to Current Channel.