IT Admins not impressed by Quick Assist move to Microsoft Store

Annoyed IT Admin

Well, that escalated quickly! Redmond is on a quest to move as many of the apps and applets in Windows that it can to the Microsoft Store. A noble intention for sure, as there is 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.

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 made use of the opportunity to move it over to the Microsoft Store.

Quick Assist Icon

The transition was finalized yesterday, meaning Quick Assist is no longer available as a native application for Windows 11 and Windows 10. If you open the tool in Windows today, you will be greeted with a message that for a more secure experience, you need to get the latest version by May 23, 2022.

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:

The gist of the matter is that the app has several bugs and issues that are proving annoying.

There is trouble in the form of key features like native keyboard shortcut to trigger it are no longer working. 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 admis are taking their frustration out. 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 up 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.