Starting June 30, 2024, Genesys will no longer support the Legacy Co-browse for chat and voice functions in Genesys Cloud. Genesys encourages its customers to migrate to the new co-browse for Messenger, which supports web messaging and voice. For more information, see Deprecation: Legacy Co-browse and Screenshare.

With Genesys Cloud co-browse for web chat, customers can share their view of a webpage or web application with an agent. After sharing starts, sharers can see where agents click on the page. Co-browse provides the following features:

  • Ability for agents or sharers to start a co-browse session from an existing chat interaction
  • Zero downloads for sharers
  • JavaScript API for integrating co-browse with your website
  • Configurable masking rules for sensitive data
  • Cursor mirroring that allows sharer and viewer to see each others’ cursor movement
  • Click annotations that show both parties where the other user clicks
  • Unlimited number of participants
  • Supports Shift JIS encoding 
  • Industry standard encryption for both data at rest and data in transit

How co-browse for web chat works

Co-browse sessions have one sharer and one viewer:

  • Sharer: The user who shares their screen, usually a customer. 
  • Viewer: The user who sees the shared screen, usually an agent. An agent can run one co-browse session at a time.

During a co-browse session, co-browse sends any changes to your website’s Document Object Model (DOM) to Genesys Cloud. The DOM describes the underlying structure of webpages. Co-browse then uses this information to build the same page the sharer sees on the viewer’s screen seamlessly. Co-browse watches for any change on the page, such as scrolling, clicking, or text typed in a form field. When there is a change to the DOM, co-browse sends the change to Genesys Cloud to update the viewer’s screen in real time.

Because co-browse watches for updates to the DOM, it is lightweight and fast. Co-browse sends only textual information, as opposed to video of the sharer’s screen. Co-browse also sends information only when there is a change instead of continuously streaming. This architecture also provides security, because when you configure masking, viewers cannot see any information that you mark as sensitive, and that information never leaves the sharer’s system.