Forum Discussion
Remote assistance with Quick Assist is changing
Hi Insiders! Russell Mosier and Bianca Taylor, from the Experiences + Devices team are excited to share an upcoming change to their remote assistance app, Quick Assist.
Remote assistance with Quick Assist
Quick Assist is an app in Windows 10 and Windows 11 that enables you to receive or provide assistance with your PC over a remote connection. The current built-in Quick Assist app is reaching end of service.
To keep your remote assistance sessions secure, you will need to download the new Quick Assist from the https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/quick-assist/9p7bp5vnwkx5#activetab=pivot:overviewtab.
How it works
- Select Start > Microsoft Store.
- In the Microsoft Store window, type Quick Assist in the Search box.
- Click Quick Assist in the list, and then click the Get button.
Find out the rest here in the https://insider.office.com/en-us/blog/remote-assistance-with-quick-assist-is-changing!
Cheers,
Nathan
Office Insider Community Manager
Become an Office Insider and gaining exclusive access to new features and help shape the future of Office. Join Now: https://insider.office.com/join/windows | https://insider.office.com/join/mac | https://insider.office.com/join/ios | https://insider.office.com/join/android
143 Replies
This is a real problem for us. 3/4 of our users are on 1809 LTSC; the old program is disabled and the new app doesn't work. It installs but we get the same elevation errors as above. The Already installed link either isn't there or spins forever when clicked.
We pay good money for Enterprise licensing and 1809 LTSC is still under full support. You shouldn't just unilaterally remove features from it. In fact, this was a big reason for choosing LTSC. We need it fixed.
- Totally agree with you. LTSC is only version which you can use in production and easy way to get support for users is Quick Assist. Too bad that there is no hack how to use old or new app on LTSC edition. Microsoft focus only for profit and online world in last years 😞
Hi all, just wanted to let you know a workaround we have noticed when updating quick assist on 1909 to the new app.
We were getting the requires elevated permissions error after installing the new app and then opening from the start menu. However, if you open the old app, and then click the bit at the bottom saying if you've already installed it, open here, it will open the app successfully. This seems to be related to the permissions set on the WindowsApps folder in program files, it seems users don't have permission to access this which prevents the new app from opening, but if you open it through the link in the old app, it bypasses those folder permissions.
- This is so stupid. Why change what is working just fine? We are still working in hybrid mode and this update is asking for elevated permissions and will create so much unnecessary admin for us.
- How to deploy Quick Assist on LTSC version wich does not have Microsoft Store?
- There are a few posts above and below this one. If you don't have the Store Installed, you'll need to get the AppX installer (it is called 'App Installer') installed then use that to install the AppX package for Quick Assist. We deploy both through SCCM and do the same for HEIC support.
Easily the worst decision Microsoft has made today. You FINALLY had a remote assist applicaiton that JUST WORKED, and decided to wipe your behind with it.
- We are using MSFT private store in our company and after whitelisting the new QA app you can install it but we also see the UAC ADM prompt. When you cancel the ADM prompt the store app is installed nonetheless and QA seems to work with no issues. Can MSFT confirm please that "one-time" ADM credentials are not needed for the app
This happened to me as well in the beginning, but it then stopped working, clicking cancel would eventually display an error that the new quick assist app was not installed,and it would insist on admin credentials before being installed properly. The only way i got it to install across the other workstations was via a powershell script deployed through sccm or through gpo, if you check a few posts before this, it might help you out maybe.
Nathan_Pfeifer
This is what happened to us when we installed new QuickAssist app from Microsoft store:When open normally:
When open with elevated right as required:
I've never had any problem with the old version, yet i couldn't get this new version to work. I tried to look for solution but none available at the moment.
Can someone please point me to the work around ?
Quang
- HI NvQuang, I replied to the wrong person, please see my last post on a workaround for this issue 🙂
- We've started getting this issue now when we update to the new version on 1909. Utterly stupid change from MS, clearly trying to push MS Store on to us all. Haven't been able to work out a fix for this yet. Well done Microsoft for breaking something that actually worked really well and consistently (unlike the majority of your other products).
We found the shortcut doesn't work, but if we search for QA from Start, it does launch. But then it still tells us to update, but there's a little link below "Already installed it? Open it now" that works. First run can take quite few seconds.
- Uh-oh, we're finding issues with Win 10 versions 1909 and older. Yes, we're trying hard to get everyone upgraded, but so many remote users makes that difficult... Our 20H2 and later PCs can install QA without any problems.
- We're likely needing to deploy the Offline version of Quick Assist from the MS Store since we don't give our users admin rights. How often will this be updated in the Store? Will change logs be provided on new versions? Is there a way admins can be notified so we are able to download the newest version of the offline installer to deploy to stay on top of any future security vulnerabilities?
- So MS Support reached out to us about an issue, today and apparently they cannot connect due to other policies to Teams calls and wanted us to us Quick Assist.
But it doesn't work.
Happy to share the ticket number so you can explain to that part of MS why this part of MS won't let us easily use Quick Assist.
This is toooooooooooo funny. re: walking a remote user through installing Quick Assist:
(proof, my concern about remote user installing an impostor app, is valid)I just performed a clean install of Windows 11 Pro;
Created two Local accounts: an Administrator, and a Standard User.
As Admin, searched Quick Assist from Start, opened it, used the prompt in the old version to install the new. All good so far.
Next, login as Standard User. Click Start and search for "quick assist":
Under 'Best match': nothing, just 'See web results'.
Under 'Search the web': Top match is an advertisement for 3rd party software offering persistent remote access. Second match is the Wikipedia page for Microsoft Quick Assist. Third is a Microsoft Support article on how to install Quick Assist, and finally, the fourth listing is for the Quick Assist app from the Microsoft App Store.IF a third party can purchase the top result, when the search is performed from the Microsoft Windows Start Button, AND the search term is an exact match for a Microsoft Product, further, a product that facilitates remote access... there is something seriously wrong.
 
ShawnZ1H ... and again. 30 minutes on the phone, still cannot establish screen sharing. Regular users will do all sort of things to break this. This is a user we presumed was using a local account. When they launch the store to get the new Quick Assist app, they are prompted to login with their microsoft account. Problem is, it's not their microsoft account. In this case, it's prompting for password for the microsoft account of the users' spouse. Who knows when user, or perhaps their spouse, wanted to do something requiring store access and just entered the credentials they knew (or created a new account) unwittingly, they permanently associated this local user with their account. So we go to Settnigs, Accounts, tell it NOT to automatically login with microsoft, do shutdown, power on, ... and STILL, microsoft store prompts for spouses microsoft account login. I've walked dozens of users through adding new Quick Assist. This is the first time a user has been required to authenticate to the store.
As we all are finding there are lots of ways to break this, and fixing remote assist remotely is tedious at best.
Remote Assist tools need to 'Just Work'. Why is it called "QUICK-Assist" ? Name no longer fits.
It seems like your new app also lost functionality.
If our users opened the build-in Quick Assist with admin (elevated) rights the secure desktop prompt didn't pause your view on the desktop but showed the view on the interactive desktop. So as an admin you could help your user by (re)installing software and so on...With the new app we don't succeed in finding a solution or policy change to make it work like we were used to. We always run into the secure desktop prompt pause screen No documentation or whatever was found.
So now we need to look for a different solution. As as school institution it will cost a lot of money to replace the working (build in) solution we used before.
I would be nice to see some more documentation on how to get the same functionality as the desktop one.- This has always been a problem with us, because we do not for any reason allow our users to run programs with elevated rights (and neither should your school!!). For this reason we have disabled secure desktop (desktop dimming) during User Account Control - it is much safer to turn that function off then to provide users with elevated rights. In this link you will find many ways on how to accomplish this: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-enable-desktop-access-during-user-account-control-prompt-windows-10
No worries GreatToHearFromYou 😉 , users don't have elevated rights. It's solely the QA-icon that's opened with elevated rights via the software distribution (ZENworks). We already tried all kind of possible (gpo) solutions but they don't change anything in the recent W10 (21H2).
If you have a look at W10 documentation it seems defaults for "User Account Control"-settings also changed after recent W10 updates.
