Please bring back the "Remote assistance"

[REDACTED]

Maybe I'm the suspicious type, but when a feature component is removed (and not simply disabled for the free version), I have to believe there are reasons that haven't been mentioned.

Lots of problems, many did not get it to work

That's hard to believe. Avasts solution always worked fine for me.

For my folks and from my experience it was much harder to deal with Microsofts MSRA and other tools like Teamviewer & Co.

[Lisandro]

Avasts solution always worked fine for me.

Indeed. It was not dropped due to bugs or problems.
The main goal is to focus (technical) resources in protection features and, in fact, Remote Assistance was a feature used by very few % of Avast's users (and we have this data by telemetry).

[REDACTED]

The main goal is to focus (technical) resources in protection features and, in fact, Remote Assistance was a feature used by very few % of Avast's users (and we have this data by telemetry).

So you don't need to keep a reason for these "very few % of users" to be your loyal clients anymore?

Anyway, you choose to remove from your product an unique (among competing AV solutions) useful function that works ok (so need a very little further development) and, due to low demand, consume a very few resources of your dedicated servers.

A questionable marketing decision, i wish to say.

[REDACTED]

Avasts solution always worked fine for me.

Indeed. It was not dropped due to bugs or problems.
The main goal is to focus (technical) resources in protection features and, in fact, Remote Assistance was a feature used by very few % of Avast's users (and we have this data by telemetry).

Finally an answer from one of the Avast team. Thank you Lisandro for your information on this!

Well; Focussing in protection features makes sense to me in somehow.

But - as "yhorror" already mentioned - in marketing perspectives you are giving up an advantage against competitors by removing a handy and proper working feature that others just don't have.

That's something that your decision makers should reconsider.

[REDACTED]

Attention folks, check out the german section here https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=187825.0

User Asyn just created a questionnaire survey on this issue. You can vote there!

If you're not so good in German, here's the translation of the titel and the 3 given choices.


Titel:

Wollt ihr die Fernunterstützung zurück? >>> Do you want to have the remote assistance back?


Choices:

Ja, unbedingt, habe die Funktion regelmäßig genutzt. >>> Yes, absolutely. I used this feature frequently.

Nein, dieses Tool hat in einem AV nichts verloren. >>> No, such a feature has no place in an AV security suite.

Ist mir eigentlich vollkommen egal. >>> It's actually completely irrelevant to me.


So come on guys. LET'S VOTE THERE! We got only 60 days to do so.

[REDACTED]

Attention folks, check out the german section here https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=187825.0

User Asyn just created a questionnaire survey on this issue. You can vote there!

If you're not so good in German, here's the translation of the titel and the 3 given choices.

Thanks for the German translation, I've voted for option 1.

[bob3160]

I've added my affirmative vote in that thread and also reported it to Avast for a reply.
If it's not coming back as part of Avast, at least make it available as a free standing program.

[bob3160]

Avasts solution always worked fine for me.

Indeed. It was not dropped due to bugs or problems.
The main goal is to focus (technical) resources in protection features and, in fact, Remote Assistance was a feature used by very few % of Avast's users (and we have this data by telemetry).

Helping a less knowledgeable user in a secure environment isn't exactly not security related. It was also a good selling point of the product. User securely helping user.

[Vlk]

So surprised to see such a solidarity for RA here!
Seriously, the service was totally underused, we typically only had a few dozens of concurrent RA sessions at a time (compare this to the 200+ million of Avast AV users).

But alas, I do see your point. I think it was a really good idea in the beginning, we just felt a bit embarrassed about its actual implementation and so we decided to get rid of it. As you probably know, it was causing a lot of issues and was quite slow (at least compared to the industry-leading solutions like LogMeIn, TeamViewer etc).

Here's our current thinking about this whole thing: instead of spending all the engineering resources and building our own custom solution, we'd rather partner with someone who's an expert in the field, and who has a top-notch product that we could integrate into Avast.

What do you think about that?

Cheers,
Vlk

[bob3160]

So surprised to see such a solidarity for RA here!
Seriously, the service was totally underused, we typically only had a few dozens of concurrent RA sessions at a time (compare this to the 200+ million of Avast AV users).

But alas, I do see your point. I think it was a really good idea in the beginning, we just felt a bit embarrassed about its actual implementation and so we decided to get rid of it. As you probably know, it was causing a lot of issues and was quite slow (at least compared to the industry-leading solutions like LogMeIn, TeamViewer etc).

Here's our current thinking about this whole thing: instead of spending all the engineering resources and building our own custom solution, we'd rather partner with someone who's an expert in the field, and who has a top-notch product that we could integrate into Avast.

What do you think about that?

Cheers,
Vlk

Great. Hurry up.

[RejZoR]

I just hope it will even work @Vlk ...

I've tried to use it twice and in both cases all I got through was black screen and a cursor. Then I had to do it the old way blind over the phone and never bothered with it because of that... :/ It was a great idea for troubleshooting of systems relatives and friends have, but at least for me it never even worked. Could never figure out why and never got any response from avast! team either. There should still be thread about it somewhere around here...

[Alikhan]

So surprised to see such a solidarity for RA here!
Seriously, the service was totally underused, we typically only had a few dozens of concurrent RA sessions at a time (compare this to the 200+ million of Avast AV users).

But alas, I do see your point. I think it was a really good idea in the beginning, we just felt a bit embarrassed about its actual implementation and so we decided to get rid of it. As you probably know, it was causing a lot of issues and was quite slow (at least compared to the industry-leading solutions like LogMeIn, TeamViewer etc).

Here's our current thinking about this whole thing: instead of spending all the engineering resources and building our own custom solution, we'd rather partner with someone who's an expert in the field, and who has a top-notch product that we could integrate into Avast.

What do you think about that?

Cheers,
Vlk

I would say, just focus on the security side of things.

There are plenty of third party tools that do the job perfectly as you mentioned and there is a reason why no other AV vendors have remote assistance. The one that was removed never either worked or was painfully slow.

I would also hope cleanup becomes a separate program away from the Anti-Virus suite since it doesn't help security, has problems and currently has high CPU usage problems.

[Be Secure]

instead of spending all the engineering resources and building our own custom solution, we'd rather partner with someone who's an expert in the field, and who has a top-notch product that we could integrate into Avast.

What do you think about that?

No need of integrate into Avast for good.There are many alternatives and users can use it separately.

[REDACTED]

I would say having this feature does help with the security side of things.

Quite often I would use the Remote Assistance feature to remotely log into my elderly relatives computers to go through and make sure everything was up to date on their machines (drivers, programs etc).

I've personally never had any problems with the Remote Assistance that was in Avast, I just hope that this feature comes back soon in a future version of Avast.

[bob3160]

I've used it often to help those who had a problem after I personally persuaded them to change to Avast.
Usually because they were in such a hurry to install Avast that they didn't properly remove their old AV.
Remember, I've told a lot of people about Avast and still do on an ongoing basis: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=78426.0
It was also always well received as one of the helpful features of Avast.