Quick Assist for Citrix VDI with scripted installation

Many administrators use the Microsoft Quick Assist tool to support users. The application used to be a part of the operating system itself, untill Microsoft decided to move it to the Microsoft Store and also let it use the Microsoft Edge WebView2 component. See the following news article with more background information: Windows admins frustrated by Quick Assist moving to Microsoft Store (bleepingcomputer.com)

This created two issues for administrators;

1. The built-in application did not work anymore and would prompt you to update the application. Most end-users did not have such rights.
2. The new Quick Assist application needs Microsoft Edge WebView2 component, which is not always installed on a machine.

We also had these issues and were unable to fix the Quick Assist update prompt on our clients Citrix environment. Even if you had the application pre-installed and tested on your golden image, it would not work!

The notification would look something like this:

Our solution to the problem

During the troubleshooting it became clear that no matter what we did in our golden image, we use non-persistent VDI desktops with Citrix, the Quick Assist application would keep prompting us with the update window.

To overcome this issue we did the following:

1. Make sure that the Microsoft Edge WebView2 is preinstalled in the golden image.
2. Ensure the appxbundle and the PowerShell script (will be explained later) are on a location on the C:\ drive.
3. Create a scheduled task to trigger the PowerShell script 1 minute after the userlogon.

In order to download the appxbundle of the Quick Assist application it is important to do the following two steps:

1. Grab the URL from the Microsoft Store of the Quick Assist application. As of the moment of writing the URL is as follows: Quick Assist – Microsoft Store-toepassingen
2. Navigate to Microsoft Store – Generation Project (v1.2.3) [by @rgadguard & mkuba50] (rg-adguard.net), and paste in the URL of the Quick Assist Store link. Scroll all the way down and download the .appxbundle file.

Now that you have the installation file, add this to you golden-image proces to store it on the C:\ drive. The next step is to edit the PowerShell script with your own specifics and also copy this file to the C:\ drive.

Start-Transcript -Path "C:\Temp\$env:username-Log.txt" -Force
Remove-WindowsCapability -Online -Name 'App.Support.QuickAssist~~~~0.0.1.0' -ErrorAction 'SilentlyContinue'
Add-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online -SkipLicense -PackagePath 'C:\Temp\MicrosoftCorporationII.QuickAssist_2022.825.2016.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.appxbundle'
Stop-Transcript

I added some small logging so you can see that the removal of the old Quick Assist and installation of the new Quick Assist worked.

The last step is to create a scheduled task which will run this PowerShell script under the SYSTEM account and with the Trigger to start after a user logs on with a 30 seconds or 1 minute delay (results may vary).

The end result is that you can see the Quick Assist application being installed, which puts some extra load on your machine during this, in the task manager.

And happy users that the application will now start! If you have found another solution to this problem or have suggetions, please let us know.