What is the purpose of the Office 15 Subscription Heartbeat

Question

_{Wednesday, August 2, 2017 8:50 PM | 1 vote}

At my company, I am installing the full standalone version of Office 2016 with a VLK license on over 1000 plus Window 7 Pro computers, both 32 and 64 bit. This is not Subscription based version.  On each install, I'm finding that Office sets up a scheduled task, "Office 15 Subscription Heartbeat" that runs every day.  The description of the task is "Task used to ensure that the Microsoft Office Subscription licensing is current." 

On my 32 bit Windows 7 PCs, this task runs but causes an error in the Event Log for "Office 2016 Licensing Service" with a detail of "

Subscription licensing service failed."  On my 64 bit PCs, the task runs but fails and no error shows in the Event log.  The reason the task fails on 64 bit is that the path entered for the task is wrong but that is not the purpose of this question.

My question is, What is the purpose of this task?  I understand that the license has to be verified after the install but it shouldn't be an everyday event.

And once again, I am not using a subscription based licensing, these are all purchased through the Volume Licensing program and are stand alone installs.  Once again I am not using Office 360, Share Point, One Note or any type of cloud service. 

All replies (2)

_{Friday, August 4, 2017 8:00 AM ✅Answered | 1 vote}

Hi,

Thank you for the feedback. Based on my research, this is a known issue and the product group are aware of this. The Office 15 Subscription Heartbeat task is unnecessary for the MSI version of Office. You can completely disable it. Fortunately, the task does not impact the MSI product.

Thank you again for your understanding and support.

Regards,

Steve Fan

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_{Friday, August 4, 2017 7:41 AM}

I've got the same question.

Moreover, on my computer this task is failed everyday and I read after 6 months users receive warnings that their software isn't licenced. Is it true ?