Word, Excel, Outlook and the rest of Microsoft's Office programs for the desktop, licensed by subscription. Admins roll them out using the Office Deployment Tool or Intune.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Microsoft 365 Apps in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- REST
Short for representational state transfer, the style of HTTP API that Azure services expose.
- subscription
Entitlement bought for a product under VCF 9.0 licensing, carrying a set capacity. Where active ones share the same site, unit and product, their capacity is combined into licences, which are then allocated to vCenters.
- Office Deployment Tool
A command-line utility, made up of setup.exe and a configuration.xml file, used to download, install, modify or uninstall Microsoft 365 Apps.
- Intune
Microsoft's device management service, once branded Microsoft Endpoint Manager. Its compliance policies are what the compliant-device grant in Conditional Access relies on.
Related terms
- CDN
Edge-of-internet servers that deliver downloaded content. By default, the Office one (officecdn.microsoft.com) is where Microsoft 365 Apps get installed and updated from.
- Cloud Policy service for Microsoft 365
Delivers per-user settings to Microsoft 365 Apps on whatever device someone signs in to, for instance whether Copilot may search the web. Admins manage it in the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center and target Microsoft Entra groups.
- Cloud update
Handles Microsoft 365 Apps updates for devices on Current or Monthly Enterprise from within the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center, with waves, exclusion windows, pausing and rollback. Where other update management also applies, it wins.
- F3
A frontline plan giving fully editable Microsoft 365 apps in browsers and on small-screen mobile devices, without desktop versions. Entra ID P1 is bundled.
- Gallery image
A Windows 365 Cloud PC image that Microsoft builds and refreshes each month, with or without Microsoft 365 Apps. The alternative is a custom image that an organisation produces and keeps up to date itself.
- Microsoft 365 Apps admin center
Microsoft's online console for managing Microsoft 365 Apps. It hosts Cloud Policy, inventory, saved configurations and the Office Customization Tool.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot
Assistant built into Microsoft 365 apps that grounds its answers in an organisation's data via Microsoft Graph. Because it respects existing permissions, content that has been overshared can appear in responses.
- Microsoft Connected Cache for Enterprise and Education
A purely software cache, run from Azure, that holds Microsoft downloads like Defender and Windows updates, Intune apps and Microsoft 365 Apps. Hosts can be Ubuntu 24.04, Windows 11 or Windows Server 2022 and newer, and clients use it via Delivery Optimization.