Well, that escalated quickly! Redmond is on a quest to move as many of the apps and applets in Windows as it can to the Microsoft Store. A noble intention for sure, as there is a net benefit in decoupling these applications from the OS.
But not everyone is okay with this strategy — certainly not IT admins.
The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back was Quick Assist.
For those of you outside of the loop, Quick Assist is the in-house remote assistance app that Microsoft has developed for its platform. This is a very handy tool, and very much in use by system administrators who appreciate its flexibility and ease of use.
Last month, the software titan released a new and updated Quick Assist app, complete with a new logo below, and took the opportunity to move it to the Microsoft Store.
The transition was finalized yesterday, meaning Quick Assist is no longer available as a native Windows 11 and Windows 10 application. If you open the tool in Windows today, you will be greeted with a message that you need to get the latest version by May 23, 2022, for a more secure experience.
But as reported, the store version of the Quick Assist tool is coming under fire by IT admins on social media for a variety of different reasons.
As Matthias Waltniel, a Microsoft Endpoint Management Consultant, put it:
Quick Assist was a great product, but this new version has some challenges:
– Requires local admin permissions during install
– Installs next to the previous version
– Cannot start "elevated" as adminWill the previous version really stop working on 16th of May?
— Matthias Waltniel (@MWaltniel) May 10, 2022
The gist of the matter is that the app has several bugs and issues that are proving annoying.
Trouble arises because key features like the native keyboard shortcut to trigger it no longer work. Plus, it has become impossible to mass deploy the app to all machines.
Some are even lamenting the fact that the new version of the app needs local admin privileges to be installed. And then there is a case where the store version of Quick Assist installs next to the previous version of the program.
This Tech Community post is where IT admins are venting their frustration. Most of this seems to be code debt, as in features that were left out in the transition from native to the Microsoft Store.
Redmond seems to be aware of these complaints and even has a support page for these issues. Company employees in the Tech Community thread are providing workarounds for IT admins like using an offline version and pinning the store version to the taskbar.
This is certainly a big change, and not everyone has adapted well to it.
