Overview
When you use only the M-Files Long-term Support (LTS) versions and want to update your computers' M-Files installations only with newer LTS versions in a controlled manner, you should ensure that you have disabled the M-Files Automatic Updates (enabled by default on M-Files Online installations) on your computers.
This is because the Automatic Updates feature will keep a computer's M-Files installation up-to-date with the standard monthly released M-Files Online versions, not with the LTS versions.
We have an improvement suggestion (ID 171335) about having the option to use Automatic Updates so that it would keep client computers updated based on the LTS versions. You can track the availability of the improvement from our release notes.
Solution
Use the registry settings documented here to disable M-Files automatic updates on the needed computers. In most cases, the Enabled value mentioned first on the above page can be used to configure it, but the article also describes other options for configuring automatic updates if needed.
This ensures that your computers' M-Files installations do not update automatically each month and that you can control how and when LTS version updates are performed.
Please refer to this user guide article on how to manually update M-Files to a newer version with an M-Files installation package: Manually Updating M-Files
It's also possible to distribute M-Files updates on your client computers in a centralized way. For more information on this topic, please refer to Installing M-Files Desktop, M-Files Server, and M-Files Admin with Advanced Options (choose the M-Files Web option when opening the link) document.
