Remote assistance with Quick Assist is changing

[Nathan_Pfeifer]

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

1. Select Start > Microsoft Store.
2. In the Microsoft Store window, type Quick Assist in the Search box.
3. 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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[#2]

Yes, it works to install the new Quick Assist. There is only one catch, it eliminates the automatic update. So, that means you have to update it manually. That's quite cumbersome, to say the least. But, it seems like the only way.

[#3]

It is possible to install Quick Assist without annoying UAC popup, when it is installed as offline installer with Endpoint. Choose offline licensing in the Business store, then go to Endpoint and choose the offline Installer. Only catch is, this will only work as Required with device license. Then, it is installed in system context and will not ask for admin credentials. And, this will also not auto-update.

[#4]

Thank you for addressing the issues. My last remaining pain point is it not being installed by default on Win10. I do not plan on switching to win10 since there was just too much regression in the UI. If you could solve that, I'd be completely sold. Thank you.

[#5]

@Nathan_Pfeifer 

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.

[#6]

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-...

[#7]

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.

[#8]

@VrijCLB_Bart Ah, that is great to hear. Unfortunately, I still read way too many times where businesses allow admin rights for end users or allow them to run/install "rogue" software. This just can't be done anymore (not that it was ever good), especially now with the huge up rise of malicious software and actors. 

Anyway, back on topic. We are currently on 21H1 and I will be creating our 21H2 image soon, so I may experience the same problem you are currently having. If I find an easy solution, I will definitely share.

[#9]

Took 4 days of research and testing to deploy this, finally settled on intunewin with both an installation and detection script

For anyone looking for Intune solution the answer is on reddit.

[#10]

@Nathan_Pfeifer 

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.

 

[#11]

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.

[#12]

@GreatToHearFromYou 

Thank you so much for your post! It was just what I needed to sort out my issue, our users need admin credentials to install any kind of app and most organizations are most probably set up this way.  Your post solved my issue.

Thank you once again, :thumbs_up:.

[#13]

@edd080 You're welcome. You may have to run this command first in an elevated PowerShell prompt before running the DISM command (change Path if you use a different location): Add-AppxPackage -Path "C:\Temp\MicrosoftCorporationII.QuickAssist_2022.509.2259.0_neutral___8wekyb3d8bbwe.AppxBundle"

Also, I was unable to run it as a GPO startup script, since the SYSTEM account is not allowed to run the Add-AppxPackage command. I guess I can use our Asset Management System, which can run scripts as different user, but it just doesn't work as well as GPO.
Do you have any suggestions on how to deploy on users systems as administrator?

[#14]

It depends, if Microsoft will be including QuickAssist in their future ISO and feature updates, like they do with Legacy QuickAssist (I certainly hope so! Nope they don't for Windows 10, see below, absolutely insane!), then it will be updated every half year. We don't provide access for our users to the MS store, so all the preinstalled appx apps we don't remove are only updated through the bi-annually feature updates which has never caused any problems.

From their FAQ: 

Will Quick Assist only be available in the Store going forward? 

The Quick Assist Store app will be preinstalled in the next update for Windows 11. Users who are currently part of the Windows Insiders program can test this today.

Note: Windows 10 users will continue to download the Store app.

[#15]

I have created a package through SCCM which points to the powershell script, it runs as admin via sccm, tested on a few machines and it worked out fine so far; I will be deploying it to the other machines and see how it goes.

[#16]

Thanks for your update! We use a different product instead of SCCM which can do the same thing, I just find that it doesn't work as good as GPO. However, it looks like we don't have another option for deployment to our current computers. I will be creating our 21H2 image soon and I will make sure it will have the new QuickAssist pre-installed.

[#17]

Not sure if this might help you out then, what if you create a scheduled task via gpo that runs as user NTAUTHORITY , that way it runs with elevated privileges and you can include the power shell script from there. The scheduled task will not be visible to the user if they enter the scheduled task application from their machine; It will be visible if you use the run as option and authenticate with admin credentials. Hope it might help.

[#18]

Unfortunately I will run into the same problem as having it as start-up script. For whatever reason Microsoft decided that NTAUTHORITY\SYSTEM is not allowed to run Add-AppxPackage. I wasn't able to get it installed with just the DISM command, did you?

[#19]

Yes I got it to install using the dism command, I will take a screenshot of the script and update my post later on as I am not at work right now; I also had used the policy execution bypass to make sure it works,but that is a seperate setting in sccm, you might need to add that in the script itself if you intend to use the script via gpo.

[#20]

Thanks! That would be much appreciated! :thumbs_up:

[#21]

@GreatToHearFromYou 

Hi there again so this is the command line from SCCM that calls the Powershell script :
"%Windir%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command \\server-name\Applications\QuickAssist\quickassist.ps1

sccm will call the powershell script (ps1) which has the following command:

DISM /online /add-provisionedappxpackage /packagepath:"\\Server-name\Applications\QuickAssist\MicrosoftCorporationII.QuickAssist_2022.509.2259.0_neutral___8wekyb3d8bbwe.AppxBundle" /skiplicense

Hope the above might help you out.