14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has updated the documentation associated with the August 2008 Office 2007 cumulative update packages release. Designed to be integrated into both the core suite components of the 2007 Office System and into Office 2007 servers, the cumulative update packages are essentially bundles of both the latest hotfixes and security patches delivered by the company. Microsoft’s recommendation is that Office 2007 customers should not integrate the package directly on top of Office 2007 platforms in production environments, without having first tested the hotfixes.
“The overall KB for the August Cumulative update has been updated, and now includes the KB article numbers for each individual product in the suite of clients and servers. It is titled Cumulative update packages for August 2008 for the 2007 Microsoft Office core suite applications and 2007 Microsoft Office servers (...). Please note that not all of the referenced KBs have been published yet (WSS 956057, MOSS 956056, and Project 956060 and 956061 are not published as of 9/11/08) so not all are live links - but this would be a good KB to bookmark and visit to get the latest on the details of what went in to the August CU,” stated Brian Smith, Microsoft Support Engineer.
According to the Redmond company, the update packages builds are cumulative, and in this context, Office 2007 users will only need to implement the latest version made available. However, just because the packages are in fact bundles of hotfixes does not exempt Office 2007 customers from having to contact Microsoft directly in order to access the fixes.
“I know it has delayed some of our customers from deploying this hotfix as the documents detailing the fixes have not been available and please accept my apologies - but the change in process to the cumulative updates has put a bottleneck into the KB production as so much needed documenting in one go. Hopefully by the time we release the October CU we will have ironed out this problem and will sync the release and the docs much better,” Smith added.