New office 365 update availability icon appears on Windows taskbar

Question

Recently, our users notice that a new Microsoft Copilot icon shows up on the Windows taskbar from time to time. When they click on it, it presents that there is an Office update available and asks if they want to proceed with the update. When they agree to proceed, the dialogue appears to be disappearing for a moment, and processing the update in the background. Then, a message dialog says Office is updated.

I notice that Office 365 updates have always been automatically done in the background before, and never popping foreground messages. Just wondering if the new behavior I describe above is set up by Microsoft globally for all Office 365 users. Or, someone alters that behavior by mistake using Microsoft 365 Admin portal?

Thanks

Woody

Answer 1

Hello Woody,

Thank you for your question and for reaching out with your question today.

The behaviour you described, where a Microsoft Copilot icon appears on the Windows taskbar and prompts users to update Office, is not a standard behaviour for Office 365 updates. It's possible that someone in your organisation has made changes to the Office update settings using the Microsoft 365 Admin portal or deployed a custom solution that triggers the update notifications.

By default, Office 365 updates are usually configured to be installed automatically in the background without any user interaction or notifications. However, administrators have the flexibility to customise the update settings based on their organisation's requirements. They can choose to enable or disable certain update options, such as displaying notifications to users or allowing users to install updates manually.

To investigate and verify the update behaviour in your organisation, you should check the Microsoft 365 Admin portal and review the update settings and configurations.

I used AI provided by ChatGPT to formulate part of this response. I have verified that the information is accurate before sharing it with you.

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Best regards.