Remote Assist Is Retiring. Here's What Field Service Teams Should Do Before December 31.

If your technicians still open Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to get a second pair of eyes on a job, you have seven weeks. Microsoft ends support for Remote Assist and Dynamics 365 Guides on December 31, 2026. After that there are no security updates and no Microsoft support, and the HoloLens 2 hardware most deployments run on stopped shipping in late 2024.

This isn't a surprise to anyone watching the product. The mobile client was deprecated in March 2025, and purchases and renewals stopped on November 1, 2025. What has caught teams off guard is that Microsoft isn't shipping a like-for-like replacement. The official guidance is to use spatial annotations in Teams mobile, or pick something from the Microsoft Marketplace.

Here's how to think about the decision, and a plan that fits in the time left.

What you're actually losing

Remote Assist did three things that mattered to field service operations:

1. It launched from the work order. A technician on a Field Service booking could start a call without leaving the job context.
2. It wrote back. Call records, snapshots and annotations landed on the work order, so the service history was complete.
3. It showed the expert what the technician saw, with annotations anchored in the technician's view.

If you also run Guides, add a fourth: step-by-step procedures delivered to the technician at the point of work.

Any replacement should be judged on those four, not on how closely it resembles the HoloLens experience. Most teams we talk to had already drifted to phones and tablets before the retirement was announced.

The three paths

Path 1: Do nothing. Remote Assist keeps running after December 31; it just isn't supported or patched. For a tool that streams video from inside your customers' facilities, running it unsupported is a conversation you'll have to have with your security team. Most won't sign off.

Path 2: Teams mobile with spatial annotations. Free with your Field Service licence, and perfectly good for an ad hoc call. The gaps show up in the workflow. The call doesn't start from the work order, nothing writes back automatically, and anyone outside your tenant, a customer or a subcontractor, has to install Teams and get through guest sign-in. You also lose the Guides use case entirely.

Path 3: A purpose-built visual assistance platform. This is what Microsoft's Marketplace guidance points at. The questions to ask any vendor: Does it integrate with Field Service, or just sit beside it? Can an outside party join without installing anything? Does it cover work instructions as well as live calls? And who does the migration work?

A seven-week plan

Week 1 (now): inventory. Pull the list of Remote Assist and Guides licence holders from the Microsoft 365 admin center. For each team, write down the two or three scenarios they actually use it for, and what device they're on. This takes an afternoon and it's the input to every decision that follows.

Week 2: pick the path. Run the inventory against the three paths above. If more than a handful of scenarios need the work-order link, write-back or external participants, Teams mobile won't hold up.

Weeks 3 and 4: pilot. One team, live work orders, the new tool running alongside Remote Assist. Measure the things that matter: time to resolution, whether the record on the work order is complete, whether the customer could join.

Weeks 5 and 6: roll out. Integration configured, users trained, Guides content moved. Keep Remote Assist available as a fallback through this stretch.

Week 7: switch off. Reassign or retire the licences, retire the HoloLens fleet, and tell your security team the exposure is closed.

We've packaged this plan, with an inventory worksheet and eleven questions to ask any vendor, as a free guide: The 6-Week Remote Assist Exit Plan.

Where ResolveGrid fits

ResolveGrid is a visual assistance and AI troubleshooting platform that integrates with Dynamics 365 Field Service. Sessions start from the work order and the recording, photos and an AI-written summary come back to it. Customers and contractors join from a browser link with nothing to install. Digital Work Instructions covers the Guides use case. It runs on iOS, Android and the browser, with no headset.

For teams moving off Remote Assist, we're doing the transition work at no charge for anyone who signs by January 31, 2027: inventory, Field Service integration setup, Guides migration and training. The details are at resolvegrid.ai/remote-assist.

Seven weeks is enough time if you start the inventory this week. It isn't enough if you start in December.

Want to see ResolveGrid on a Field Service work order? Book a transition assessment.

FAQ: the Remote Assist retirement

When does Dynamics 365 Remote Assist end support?

December 31, 2026, together with Dynamics 365 Guides. Purchases and renewals ended on November 1, 2025.

What is Microsoft's replacement for Remote Assist?

Microsoft has not announced a like-for-like replacement. Its guidance is to use spatial annotations in Teams mobile, included with a Field Service licence, or to choose a third-party solution from the Microsoft Marketplace.

Can we keep using Remote Assist after December 31, 2026?

The software will keep running, but without security updates or Microsoft support. Most security teams will not approve an unsupported tool that streams video from customer sites.

What happens to our Guides content?

Guides are stored in Dataverse and can be exported through the Web API or packaged as .guide files until end of support. After that, retrieval is not guaranteed. Export or migrate before the deadline.