OneNote 2016 Missing

Tom, I'm going to add to your concern today, as my organization has also been affected by this decision to remove OneNote (2016) desktop app from Business Premium subscribers. I have searched the Message Center for a official statement to plan for the removal of the OneNote app from the installation, however there is nothing in the last 30 days to warn that the change was imminent. I did find that this change was planned to begin in September. The documentation found was this updated article from today: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/DeployOffice/deployment-guide-onenote

The document states: 

But, in the next several months, the following changes are coming to OneNote for new Office deployments:

• If you're deploying Office 365 ProPlus on a computer running Windows 10, OneNote 2016 will no longer be installed by default when you're installing Office 365 ProPlus from the Office 365 portal or by using System Center Configuration Manager (Current Branch). OneNote for Windows 10 will be the default OneNote experience.
• If you're deploying Office 2019, OneNote for Windows 10 will be the default OneNote experience.

And...

These changes also apply to Office 365 Business, which is the version of Office that comes with some Office 365 plans, such as Business Premium.

So, when users were updated this week to the 2019 version automatically (they are on the Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) update schedule), OneNote 2016 was uninstalled. This disrupts our entire workflow for using OneNote in our business as features needed are not available in the new Windows 10 version. Some workers have 10-15 active notebooks that just "disappeared." As of now, I am not sure how we are going to get the 2016 version reinstalled, as we provision all of our users through the Office 365 portal.

I cannot stress enough that we feel blindsided by this change as when the original communication claimed we could still deploy OneNote 2016. Yet here we are again losing a vital program without communicating effectively on the changes and its unplanned consequences. Once I submit a ticket and find the workaround, I will update this post.