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Have you ever been asked a computer question from a friend or family member who is located miles away? Wouldn't it be great if you could see what they were trying to describe to you and show them how to fix the problem remotely? Remote Assistance, a feature of Windows XP, is a great idea for troubleshooting issues that are hard to explain or which require a complicated series of steps to fix. Remote Assistance can be used to help users with simple problems like "How do I format this document?" and also more complicated ones like "I need to download and install a new driver and synchronize with my new handheld device, what do I do?"

Remote Assistance is also useful in Help Desk scenarios for supporting desktop users, though the Windows XP version of this feature has a few limitations as far as enterprise environments are concerned. For example, while Remote Assistance is closely integrated with XP's Help and Support feature, this integration can make it difficult for some users to find out how to solicit help using Remote Assistance. Also, XP's version of Remote Assistance had limited scripting capabilities, and administrators have limited control over the feature using Group Policy.

With Windows Vista however, Remote Assistance is now greatly enhanced as far as corporate environments are concerned. For example, desktop users now have a Remote Assistance icon directly available from the Start menu, making it much easier for them to solicit assistance from support personnel. Remote Assistance in Vista is also scriptable using command-line options, and this means that administrators can now do things like deploy a shortcut to Remote Assistance on every user's desktops so that when a user double-clicks on this shortcut it generates a Remote Assistance solicitation message and saves this message on a network share that is actively monitored by your Help Desk personnel. Vista also has new Group Policy settings for managing how Remote Assistance works in enterprise environments. Finally, other Vista enhancements to Remote Assistance include reduced bandwidth usage and optimization, transparent NAT traversal using IPv6, logging of Remote Assistance sessions for troubleshooting and audit trail purposes, and being able to offer Remote Assistance using Windows Messenger Live 8.0.

Overall, these improvements to Remote Assistance in Windows Vista are quite impressive, and Remote Assistance is now both easy enough for your grandma to use yet powerful for the largest enterprises that need to support their desktop users. John Thekkethala, Program Manager for Remote Assistance at Microsoft says, "Remote Assistance in Vista is a vastly improved feature with major enhancements in connectivity, usability and performance, making it an indispensible support and collaboration tool for both home users and corporate Help Desk personnel." The improvements to Remote Assistance are just one more reason why enterprises should give serious consideration to upgrading their desktops computers to Windows Vista when the RTM version becomes available.

ITworld.com

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