Purpose of Remote Assistance Session Logging

Session logs for Remote Assistance are mainly intended for enterprises that are required to maintain records of system and user activity for record-keeping purposes. They are not intended as a way to record every action performed by Help Desk personnel when troubleshooting problems with users' computers. A typical environment in which session logging might be required would be in a banking environment, where a financial institution is required by law to maintain records of who accessed a computer and at what time.

Because the permissions on these session logs grant the User full control over logs stored on her own computer, by default, session logs are generated on both the User's computer and the Helper's computer so that the Helper can archive them and protect them from tampering. The logs created on each side of a Remote Assistance session are similar but not identical. This is because session logs are generated from the perspective of the computer involved-whether the User's computer or the Helper's computer-and therefore complement each other instead of being identical.

In an enterprise environment, Group Policy can be used to enable or disable session logging. If session logging is not configured using Group Policy, both the User and Helper are free to disable session logging on their own computers. For more information, see the section titled "Managing Remote Assistance Using Group Policy" later in this tutorial.