For those of you who successfully use the shortcut for Offer Remote Assistance (ORA), you've probably wanted to automate it just a little more with parameters at some point or another. You may have even come across EdmSaleBoy's Usenet Post titled "Programatically Offer Remote Assistance." I did a few times but it didn't do exactly what I wanted to. Though I appreciated EdmSaleBoy's code extraction skills, I didn't find the solution of overwriting UnsolicitedCUI.htm to be very elegant so I spent some hours looking into alternatives.
ORA is a bit of a programming pain because it requires client-side Javascript and it's picky about what it will and will not let you do. I wanted to find a way to call ORA from a webpage and wondered how I would pass some variables to the script. The command line was not cooperating with me so I thought that perhaps I could hack together something with javascript and Microsoft.XMLHTTP but ORA denied me access. After some hackery, I discovered the joys of objSAFClassFactory.ExtraArgument.
Using objSAFClassFactory.ExtraArgument, I was able to dynamically pass the workstation name and username (note: the username MUST be in the domain\username format or it won't work.) So now I present to you the following code, which you can save as cmdOfferRemoteAdmin.htm under the directory %windir%\pchealth\helpctr\System\.
cmdOfferRemoteAdmin.htm
<html XMLNS:helpcenter>
<head>
<!--
Copyright (c) 2000 Microsoft Corporation
-->
<helpcenter:context id=idCtx />
<title>Remote Assistance</title>
<!-- The SAF class factory object -->
<object classid=CLSID:FC7D9E02-3F9E-11d3-93C0-00C04F72DAF7 height=0 id=objSAFClassFactory width=0></object>
<script LANGUAGE="Javascript">
function onContinue()
{
var g_szWorkstation = null;
var g_szUsername = null;
var c_WorkstationTag = "WORKSTATION=";
var c_UsernameTag = "&USERNAME=";
var szArgs = objSAFClassFactory.ExtraArgument;
var i = szArgs.indexOf(c_WorkstationTag);
var j = szArgs.indexOf(c_UsernameTag);
g_szWorkstation = szArgs.slice(i+c_WorkstationTag.length, j);
g_szUsername = szArgs.slice(j+c_UsernameTag.length);
var i = g_szUsername.indexOf("");
g_szDomainName = g_szUsername.slice(0, i);
g_szUserName = g_szUsername.slice(i+1);
g_szSessionId = -1;
g_oSAFRemoteDesktopConnection = objSAFClassFactory.CreateObject_RemoteDesktopConnection();
g_oSAFRemoteConnectionData = g_oSAFRemoteDesktopConnection.ConnectRemoteDesktop(g_szWorkstation);
objInc = objSAFClassFactory.CreateObject_Incident();
objInc.RCTicketEncrypted = false;
objInc.RcTicket = g_oSAFRemoteConnectionData.ConnectionParms( g_szWorkstation, g_szUserName, g_szDomainName, -1, "");
var objDict = objInc.Misc;
var d = new Date();
objDict.add("DtStart", Math.round(Date.parse(d)/1000));
objDict.add("DtLength", "60");
objDict.add("Status", "Active");
objDict.add("URA", 1);
objFSO = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
tempDir = objFSO.GetSpecialFolder( 2 );
szIncidentFile = tempDir + "\UnsolicitedRA" + objFSO.GetTempName();
objInc.GetXML(szIncidentFile);
var oShell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");
var szRAURL = 'C:\WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\binaries\helpctr.exe -Mode "hcp://system/Remote Assistance/raura.xml" -url "hcp://system/Remote Assistance/Interaction/Client/RcToolscreen1.htm"' + ' -ExtraArgument "IncidentFile=' + szIncidentFile + '"';
oShell.Run( szRAURL, 1, true );
objFSO.DeleteFile( szIncidentFile );
objSAFClassFactory.close();
return;
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="onContinue();">
</body>
</html>
Once you saved the file in the proper location, you can call it by going to
%windir%\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\Binaries\HelpCtr.exe -url hcp://system/cmdOfferRemoteAdmin.htm -ExtraArgument "WORKSTATION=winxpsp2&USERNAME=testlab\chrissy"
The downside to this code is that there's little to no error handling. If just a blank "Windows Help" page appears, you've done something wrong. Make sure the computer you are attempting to connect to is pingable and that the username is in the correct format (domain\user). Also, make sure you can get the regular Offer Remote Assistance to work before calling this more advanced technique. If you are having trouble with ORA, this posting may provide some help.