Remote Assistance with video via webcam

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Hi there,

I know that it's possible with messenger to set up a video chat and
then initiate desktop sharing or remote assistance, but is it possible
to have a video window running solely from within remote assistance?
(i.e without having had a messenger session running first).

Let me try to explain what I want to do -

I work in an IT dept where we heavily use remote assistance to help
out users across the country on our WAN. This works great, and we
have it set up so that _we_ initiate the link and the user accepts it.
We also want to be able to have a net meeting of sorts available at
the same time, so that when I connect to their pc, up I pop in a
little window so they can see (and hear) me.
Obviously as I have control at that point I could set up a net meeting
from their machine to mine, but by that time I could probably have
solved the _real_ problem.

I know that remote assistance uses messenger for it's connection, but
I don't want our users to be meddling with messenger themselves.

Is this something that's even possible? or am I already out of luck?!

All our users are using XP machines, and we have messenger 7.0
installed (which I think includes 'webcam for messenger')