anyone applied July's updates and seeing M365 apps on semi annual channel be updated to latest MEC version and switched to monthly enterprise channel as part of the patching ? learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-apps/updates/unified-update-channels. I was under the impression it would only impact new installs (Cant choose SAC anymore)

They originally announced that new installs could no longer be SAC, then the next announcement was that existing installs would convert to MEC, which is what you are seeing now. Expected behaviour from what I know and have seen.

yeah looks like it is expected behaviour it updates M365 Apps to version 2606 and switches the channel to MEC as part of the July updates. The problem we have encountered is when it updates the M365 Apps client It bundles the C++ Redistributable in with the installer and updates them to the version bundled with the install and then after that we are finding loads of apps broken which use C++ such as SCCM software centre / Citrix workspace app and we have to run a repair on the C++ Redistributable to fix them 😞

I've not seen that. As far as I know M365 Apps for Enterprise has no reliance on the C++ redists. Webview2 yes

its deff updating or doing something with the C++ redistributables

Maybe I've just never noticed it. Only changed channel once at a customer from SAC to MEC a while back . We've had a few customers automatically change channels as part of this change. No reports of issues yet.

just checked my packer builds for a non persistent environment and looks like i'm already at that version of c++ redistribs, and that image has VDA/Workspace App, bunch of other apps, so i know that version of c++ works. Must have something to do with upgrading c++ on an existing image that is breaking things?

Our SCCM guy doesn't update the C++ redistributables each month as they don't show on WSUS. They get updated every couple months as part of CWA upgrades from SCCM using the CWA full installer which bundles them so I suspect we will be quite a bit behind version wise when it comes to the C++ redistributables. I am guessing that the M365 apps client update will have a minimum C++ version and will update it if older version of C++ is detected