Offering remote assistance

Remote Assistance is available for Windows XP and Windows 2003 machines. It has been configured for all Co-Managed OUs. Members of the “. IFAS-ADM-OUNAME” group have rights to offer remote assistance to computers in their OU. This is being populated using the IF-OUNAME Computer GPO.

Creating a shortcut for offering remote assistance:

It helps to have a shortcut created that will prompt for your OU Admin credentials. You can make one by right-clicking on your desktop, choosing "New > Shortcut", and copy/paste in the following command into the "Location" box:

The shortcut for offering remote assistance is:
%windir%\System32\runas.exe /user:UFAD\IF-ADMN-%USERNAME% "%windir%\Explorer.exe \"hcp://CN=Microsoft%20Corporation,L=Redmond,S=Washington,C=US/Remote%20Assistance/Escalation/Unsolicited/Unsolicitedrcui.htm\""
 

Offering assistance screen:

When run, this shortcut will bring up a DOS prompt where you enter your OU Admin password. Then it should display the following interface, where you indicate the machine to which you wish to connect:
 

Invite from the novice perspective:

The results are not instantaneous (generally takes a minute or more in my experience), but the remote person should eventually see the following:
 

Novice side interface:

Once they click "yes" they will get the following interface and you will be able to view their computer and see everything they do:
 

Novice side control invite:

If you need to actually remotely control their computer, you can request that. Once you make that request, the remote user will see the following prompt:
 

Assuming they agree, you can now control their machine remotely.

For more details see: