Microsoft Remote Help is currently in Preview and offers an improved way for people in your organisation to offer and provide help to others. It's a bit like Quick Assist with some added features.
I like it because it provides:
- An opportunity to focus on a Microsoft stack,
- A way for anyone within your organisation to provide support to others within your organisation (assuming you have given them permissions to do this). All they need is the Remote Help app.
- Better security (only those within a tenant can provide support for each other).
- The ability to monitor support sessions through Endpoint Manager (where you can also proactively get information about the device you are providing support for).
- An opportunity to move away from Teamviewer (good but expensive). Remote Help is free for the time being whilst it's in Preview.
- Some helpful features - like viewing multiple monitors and drawing on-screen.
There are some limitations
- Does not permit unattended access. This is fine for us, because we access remote appliances (like servers) over VPN/RDP.
- Need an account on the tenant where you are providing support. For clients where there is no Office 365 tenant, we have 3CX or MS Teams for screen sharing / remote access.
- Only supported on Win10/11 machines and users with an Intune licence
Remote Help consists of a few parts:
- A client app (similar to Quick Assist but not baked into Windows). Not dissimilar to Teamviewer, you need to install this on every client machine that may need to review or provide support. This app can be installed manually, or packaged as a Win32 app and deployed automatically through Endpoint Manager.
- Tenant settings (to enable Remote Help and assign people to the support role (ie can provide support through Remote Help).
Setting up Remote Help
Make sure it is enabled in your tenant.
- Log into Endpoint Manager
- Go to Tenant administration | Connectors and tokens | Remote help | Settings.
- Then enable Remote Help (disabled by default) and click Save.
Next step is to roll out the app.
- Manually - download and install the app at https://aka.ms/downloadremotehelp
- Automatically - Follow the instructions in the Microsoft guide below to build a Win32 package and deploy through Endpoint Manager.
Finally, assign support roles to people providing support.
- Log into Endpoint Manager
- Go to Tenant administration | Roles.
- Select a role that has Remote Help access and click Assignments. You can check this by selecting a role, click on Properties, and scroll down to find remote Help app permissions.
- Click + Assign to create an Assignment (ie a group(s) that are to be assigned access) and follow the prompts.
- Wait 5 minutes. The permissions may take a little while to apply.
You are now ready to provide support using Remote Help.
Using Remote Help
Check out Microsoft's instructions - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/mem/intune/remote-actions/remote-help#request-help. It's pretty straightforward:
- Supporter and supportee both run the app
- Supporter generates a code on the app and communicates this to the supportee
- The supportee enters the code into the app (has 10 mins once code is generated)
- Both parties follow the prompts to connect
More resources
I find it interesting to learn of the systems that others use, so I'd like to share the ones we use. We have a tendency to make the most of and build upon our investment in Office 365, host apps on and backup to either Azure or AWS, or to use open source.
Corporate
- Productivity - Office 365. We mainly assign E3 licences, and the occasional E1 licence for sub-contractors.
- Ticket, asset and opportunity management - Dynamics 365 (expanding into works management soon)
- Finance - Quickbooks Online
- Timesheets - Microsoft Project Web App and PowerBI (for reporting and generating printed timesheet info)
- Websites - WordPress, hosted by Synergy Wholesale (where local hosting/performance is important) or Dreamhost (where neither is).
- Progress tracking and collaboration (for testing and complex delivery projects) - Azure DevOps
- Password management - 1password (although considering an open source option)
- Progress tracking - MS Planner
- Virtual meetings - MS Teams
- Backup - Azure (Azure Backup Center for workloads on-prem and in the cloud), Office 365 (Skykick)
- Architecture diagrams - Visio
- Phone system, and alternate virtual meeting platform - 3cx with SIP trucks provisioned through NetSIP/OTW
- Remote monitoring - Zabbix
- Remote management - Teamviewer
Specialty
- Test planning, preparation and execution - Azure DevOps
- Load/performance testing - Apache JMeter (scripting) and Blazemeter (execution)
- Usability testing - Participate.io
- SCORM development - Adobe Captivate
- LMS - Moodle
- GIS - QGIS
- Client / Community / Customer Management Systems - Dynamics 365 / Powerapps / Flow
- Data transformation - Excel Power Queries (simple), Talend Open Studio (complex)
- Video production - OBS Studio or Adobe Premiere Pro
- Photo editing - Adobe Photoshop
- Records Management - Content Manager (maximising PROV compliance) or SharePoint
Hardware
- Secure tokens - Protectimus
- Laptop / desktop - Surface Pro
- WiFi APs, switches and firewalls - Ubiquiti (inc Unifi gear and Unifi Controller)
