Update for SharePoint Server 2016 (December 2017 CU)

A new cumulative update for SharePoint Server 2016 has been released (December 2017 CU).
This CU includes both Feature Pack 2, which has been included since the September CU (September 2017 CU), and the previous Feature Pack 1.

SP Build: 16.0.4627.1000 (language independent)
SP Build: 16.0.4627.1000 (language dependent)

SharePoint 2016 CU – KB articles describing the CU:

• KB 4011576 – December 2017 Update for SharePoint Server 2016 (language independent)
• KB 4011578 – December 2017 Update for SharePoint Server 2016 (language dependent fixes)
• KB 4011020 – December 2017 Update for Office Online Server 2016

SharePoint Server 2016 CU – CU download link:

• Download December 2017 Update for SharePoint Server 2016 (language independent)
• Download December 2017 Update for SharePoint Server 2016 (language dependent fixes)
• Download December 2017 Update for Office Online Server 2016 

After installation, remember to run the SharePoint 2016 Products Configuration Wizard (SharePoint 2016 Products Configuration Wizard), or the following command:
PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures -cmd secureresources -cmd services -install

Notice

Feature Pack 2 also includes all functionality from Feature Pack 1.

Always install both packages in this order:

1. language independent (updates language-independent components and increases the SP Build version)
2. language dependent (updates language-dependent components)

For language-dependent packages, it does not matter which language you select, as each package contains updates for all languages.

If you install a new language pack on your SharePoint Server 2016 farm, you must then reinstall the language-dependent update package.

Remember that Distributed Cache must also be updated alongside SharePoint; see How to update Distributed Cache correctly and for Office Online Server, you must have the current RTM release; see  How to update Office Online Server.

Included fixes and improvements

This CU includes the following fixes and improvements.

SharePoint Server 2016

This security update contains improvements and fixes for the following nonsecurity issues:

• When you set properties that are imported from Active Directory by using the user interface, certain unchecked containers other than organization unit (OU) scope are not respected.
• This update fixes an issue where the top report part of the Search Reports would count the same queries incorrectly with different casing. For example, “query”, “QUERY”, and “Query” were treated as unique query texts and counted accordingly. This fix lowercases the query text before calculating the counts.
• When you search Chinese-Simplified or Chinese-Traditional content in SharePoint 2016, you may not see the relevant results or the query keywords may not be highlighted in the results. This issue occurs because the search falls back to the English word breaker when the query is Chinese-Simplified or Chinese-Traditional based. This update resolves the issue so that the correct word breaker is selected.
• When you search for keywords that contain some specific Korean characters, the search fails because the token length is calculated incorrectly.
• When you delete a value from a custom field that’s configured to display a graphical indicator, the record in the database is not deleted, but instead the value is set to NULL, and the indicator value is preserved in reporting.
• This update reduces the default version limit number for the default document library on new SharePoint 2016 team sites from 500 down to 10. This will make storage capacity planning easier.
• This update changes the short names of the services that are using a built-in service account to friendly display names so that it’s easy to understand what service is described in the SharePoint health rules report.
• This update improves the Thai word breaker for complex compound words when you search in SharePoint.
• Translates some terms in multiple languages to make sure that the meaning is accurate.
• This update also has the following improvements:
  • Improves the SharePoint Health Analyzer algorithm that checks the free space on drives to handle large drives better. The algorithm will now report a warning if the free disk space is less than 10 GB or report an error if the free disk space is less than 4 GB.
  • Removes the following five health analyzer rules to reduce noise:
    • Health Analyzer: Validate the My Site Host and individual My Sites are on a dedicated Web application and separate URL domain
    • Health Analyzer: Database has large amounts of unused space
    • Health Analyzer: Alternate access URLs have not been configured
    • Health Analyzer: People search relevance is not optimized when the Active Directory has errors in the manager reporting structure
    • Health Analyzer: Search – One or more crawl databases may have fragmented indices

Project Server 2016

This security update contains improvements and fixes for the following nonsecurity issues:

• Assume that you have an enterprise resource that is a part of a team assignment pool. When you go to the Resource Center, select the resource and then click the Capacity Planning button, the resource is not displayed, and in some cases you see the error “Sorry, something went wrong.”
• Consider the following scenario:
  • A project manager publishes a task to a team member.
  • The team member goes to their timesheet and enters actual work on the task.
  • The timesheet is submitted and then approved.
  • The project in which the task exists is deleted.
  • The team member goes back to their timesheet.

  In this situation, the task on which the actual work was submitted is no longer there.

Office Online Server 2016

This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Office file. To learn more about these vulnerabilities, see Microsoft Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures ADV170020.