In this section, we will talk about the steps you need to take to apply a service update:

1. Configure: This is the step where you can configure when you want to take the service update. As explained in an earlier section, updates would be applied to the UAT environment first so that customer has time to validate and test the updates before it's applied to the production environment. You can define the maintenance window on LCS. It is under the PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT UPDATE CADENCE section on the Update settings tab of the Project settings page, as shown here:

2. Notice: Microsoft is making every effort to provide advance notice to the customers to get ready for new updates. Notifications will start showing up on LCS 5 before the scheduled update. So, when you log in to LCS, you would see the notification. A notification email is also sent to the LCS project owners, notifying the team about the scheduled update. The following screenshot shows an example of a notification on LCS:

3. Update: This is the step where the actual update is applied to an environment. This update is applied automatically during the maintenance window set in the configure step. Once the update is completed, an automatic email notification is sent to the project owners about the status of the update. If the customer doesn't want the automatic update, then they can still apply the update manually using LCS. Our recommendation is to have Microsoft take care of the update and have it applied automatically. The following screenshot shows how the customer can go for self-update using LCS:

4. Validate: This is the last step in the service update process. In this step, the customer would validate the newly applied update. This step should be done in the UAT environment before applying the update to the production environment. Customers can use the RSAT tool as discussed earlier to automate the testing process to save time, as shown in the following screenshot:

We learned about service updates, which are continuous updates, but what if you need an urgent fix that can't wait for a service update? Then you can get the quality update as explained in the next section.