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 Microsoft Store.
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 blog post!
Cheers,
Nathan
Office Insider Community Manager
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143 Replies
- This was brought to my attention by our Helpdesk staff and it looks like it's going to be a big problem for us. We also don't grant our users local admin rights. This seems to be a replacement rather than an update, but either way we need our users to be able to get it without elevated privileges.
Please remove the requirement for admin rights, or do away with the May 23rd deadline, or make the update available through Windows Update, or provide an MSI or EXE installer. Nathan_Pfeifer In response to your previous replies, In certain instances It's not a viable option to deploy an offline version. I'm wanting to deploy this via Endpoint Manager (Intune) and the preferred method of publishing the online version via Company Portal. My end users are not local admins nor do I want them to be. I do not wish to deploy an offline version as when an app is updated, it's detection rules are often no longer applicable so I receive error messages as it tries to redeploy the older version.
It needs to be deployable in a system context and Microsoft need to understand that sysadmins do not want their end users to be administrators of their machines.
- Is there a mechanism for deploying the new version to all users on all machines? A simple GPO deployment would be preferred. Maybe an MSI could be made available?
- This latest version logs an error in Event Viewer each time the app is run. Tested on Windows 10 and 11, same error.
- Thanks for the note!
This doesn’t seem to be related to having issues getting the app, but just an error in Event Viewer.
Quick Assist does not log anything to Event Viewer directly, but there is shared code with another application that is likely showing as an error in Event Viewer.
This shouldn’t impact anything for a user. That being said we have heard the feedback and is something we could update to clean-up in the future.
Thanks!
Nathan
How is this exciting news? This is a big problem for our company. The version of Quick Assist that came natively installed with Windows 10 was great because we could instantly provide assistance to anyone with Windows 10, regardless of whether it was their home computer or their work (domain-attached) computer. We could simply have them launch Quick assist and then give them a six-digit support code (Very simple).
Not only does the new version require per-user installation from the Microsoft Store, but the installation requires admin rights. Yikes!
Is there a mechanism for deploying the new version to all users on all machines? A simple GPO deployment would be preferred. Maybe an MSI could be made available? I am a one-man IT department managing roughly 70 Windows PCs and do not have any type of more sophisticated software deployment mechanism in place.
I am hoping that some simple solution is in the works to replace what seemed like an ideal solution that has now been taken away.
Thanks
-paulHello Paul, and thanks for the question.
If accessing from the Store page that opens from the app prompt does not work – it is also available as an offline app for distribution and can be accessed via the Microsoft Store for Business. More details are here: Distribute offline apps (Windows 10) | Microsoft Docs
If this will also not work/be viable then we’d love to get some more details about your scenario if you’d like to provide that.
Thanks so much for the feedback!- Microsoft Store for Business is being retired 2023!
RIP Quick Assist.
ps_alisto, Thanks for the warning.
Echoing what Paul said: Best thing about the existing Quick Assist is that it's guaranteed to be on every Windows 10 computer, which means we don't have to walk someone through an installation over the phone, which always carries the risk that they will install an impostor (malicious) app.
When someone is in need a remote assistance, IS NOT the time to be installing new software. What if their problem is a full system volume?
Further, if we were involved with the users PC setup, they are almost certainly logged in as a Standard Local Account, and may not be able to install new apps.
I came here looking for details about how Quick Assist is changing. Have searched high and low. Found only instructions to fetch new from app store. In App Store reviews, I see several experiencing trouble with new App. Why from App Store? Why not with Windows Updates? So far, I'm convinced we will stay with the old version.- Appreciate the note!
Understand the frustration of pushing a user to download the Store app to get a remote assistance app.
The nature of using remote assistance is that one of the parties is stuck and needs help – so it can be frustrating.
There is some underlying functionality, in how we currently have this set up, that needed to be adjusted that led to this.
That being said, this is time sensitive and sometime in mid-May the old version will no longer be usable.
Thanks for the feedback! It is being passed along, rest assured.
Nathan
