Request Remote Assistance Shortcut

dpjmie

Hi Guys,

We use Skype For Business for screen sharing and remote assistance but it has terrible limitations. I am looking for alternatives (free & simple to use). The limitations to this are a pain such as when you run an app as Admin, the helper cannot interact with that application.

Im looking at remote assistance built into windows, but I'm wondering if you can create a shortcut on the desktop which will send a remote assistance request to a specific address.

Is this doable or is there alternatives which are free (be aware it is a small/medium business so licensing could be abit of an issue.

Thanks in advance
Dpjmie

Fysh

I don't think there's a built-in way to do exactly what you want, but the command-line options for msra.exe show that it supports saving the remote assistance invite to a file and opening an email message in the default mail client with an attached RA invitation. I'd suggest wrapping the invite file creation in a PowerShell script and using Send-MailMessage to send it to whatever address you want.

As for other options, you could try tools like TightVNC (open-source, free, supports encrypted connections) or RealVNC (commercial, free version available but it does not support encryption). For either of these, if you're talking about using private/non-routable IP addresses you'll need to fiddle with NAT and/or port forwarding. Alternatively, you could use one of the many logmein/gotomypc-type products to handle this, though they are usually not free for commercial use.

Speedwell

Since you don't currently use a dedicated program such as GoToAssist (which we do where I work), I'm guessing your needs are modest.

My company has looked into Zoho partnership, and though we weren't excited about the platform as a whole, they are a reputable company who do good work. They offer a free (non-trial) remote support functionality called Assist. The free version does not allow remote rebooting but otherwise looks pretty decent. Details including pricing: https://www.zoho.com/assist/pricing.html