Remote Assistance

Remote Assistance allows you to ask for or provide help to another person who is using a distant computer, by watching what they are doing, or taking control of their computer and having them watch you.

Remote Assistance uses RDP just like Remote Desktop Connection, but the implementation is very different. You will often be asked to help a remote user perform a series of tasks. Many users just need a bit of extra guidance to complete a task, or have a question about something that is on their computer screen. After being involved in many telephone conversions with remote users, a picture is worth a thousand words - sometimes even two thousand - so by having the user be able to show you exactly what is happening to them, or being able to show the user exactly what to, you can save a great deal of time.

Remote Assistance starts with a user who needs help. They will go to Help and Support in their Start menu and open up the Help and Support Center (the remote help is here as well). In the Ask for Assistance section, there is an option to Invite a friend to connect to your computer with Remote Assistance. When they choose this and invite you to help, they will have an option of sending an invitation through Windows Messenger, e-mail, or by saving the invitation to a file. Regardless of the method they choose, an invitation file is generated, and this invitation is key to the Remote Assistance system. By opening the invitation, you will have to the ability to open the Remote Assistance application and connect to a user's computer by using RDP.

Remote Assistance requests are always initiated by the person requesting help.

The Remote Assistance application provides a section to have a chat session with the remote user, as well a section that allows you to see and/or control the remote system. Unlike Remote Desktop Connection, with this application, both the local and remote user can see what is going on with the problem computer.