Updating Office 365 Clients from a Network Location

The first step in configuring local Office 365 updating is to download the Office media using the Office Deployment Tool.  See the following article for more information on downloading and installing using the ODT.  Once it has been successfully downloaded, place the media in your desired network share location.  It is imperative that client machines have Read access to this folder.  One of the most common issues experienced with local updating is due to a lack of read permissions on the share.  The recommended method for directing client machines to a network location for updates is to set the UpdatePath at install.  To set the UpdatePath remove the XML comment tags <!--   --> from either side of the updates property in the configuration.xml file. Change the UpdatePath to the location where the updated versions will be stored.

<Updates Enabled="TRUE" UpdatePath=\\Server\Share\ />

This method is automatically creating the UpdateURL key in the registry (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\ClickToRun\Configuration) and assigning the value "\Server\Share\" to it.  Client machines will look to the location specified in the UpdateURL key at increments according to the scheduled task Office Automatic Updates.  Please note that if the UpdateURL key does not exist, client machines will download updates from the Microsoft Client Delivery Network (CDN).  If you choose to circumnavigate the scheduled task, client machines can be forced to check for updates immediately using the following command:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\ClientX64\OfficeC2RClient.exe /Update User displaylevel=True

For more information on available Office 365 update commands see the following article.

Additional Information:

Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219422(v=office.15).aspx

Reference for Click-to-Run configuration.xml file
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219426(v=office.15).aspx

Managing Updates for Office 365 ProPlus
http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_resource_kit/archive/2014/01/28/managing-updates-for-office-365-proplus-part-2.aspx