When you think of the word "collaboration," you probably think of meetings (online or offline), messaging, screen sharing, file sharing, and maybe even video conferencing. These activities have become not only standard in most business environments, but also a critical part of getting work done.

Now it's time to get ready for something completely different: co-browsing (short for "collaborative browsing"). If you haven't yet heard of co-browsing, you're not alone, and with good reason — there's probably not a single collaboration technology you've used that features it. 

Co-browsing enables multiple people in disparate locations to interact with the same web page/browser session simultaneously. 

Here's how it works:

A presenter calls up the co-browser and pulls up a web page or web-based application (think JIRA or Salesforce, for example). If the page requires login/authentication, the presenter enters their credentials, and then other participants in the meeting can use the web page/application, too, without logging in. 

It's secure because the presenter can control who can interact with the browser during a meeting, and when the presenter logs off, the session is terminated, ensuring that no one can access their information.

Cool, right? Definitely, but it's also really useful.

Consider the following: 

Imagine that you're an Agile development lead who holds regular bug-tracking meetings with your team. And like most companies these days, you've got developers in more than one US office, as well as a team in India or Ukraine. Sure, you probably use Skype or WebEx for screen sharing and can pass control from developer to developer to show their respective tickets. (If you're a user of Skype, WebEx, or another screen-sharing application, you know this can be cumbersome at best and disastrous at worst.) Or maybe you, as the meeting leader, will go through each ticket at a time and everyone can see and comment. 

Now, imagine this scenario using co-browsing. You open up your browser before the meeting and log in to JIRA. Everyone connects to the Prysm project and workspace for the meeting. Each developer takes their turn calling up their tickets via the co-browser, going through the status of their action items, walking through the comment thread, etc. No passing control back and forth. No need for screen sharing. No external application. What's more, you can participate from any device — conference room display, desktop, laptop, even your phone. 

At Prysm, we've been testing this new functionality out, and everyone is loving it. We're very excited to share it with our customers and look forward to your feedback.

For more information, check out the feature overview and the co-browsing Quick Guide.

And if you'd like to try this feature out for yourself from the comfort of your own computer, use our self-service feature to schedule a demo.

Let us know what you think!