Getting Started
The very basics, what is Web Observer?
Web Observer is a tool that lets people see, record, and share what's happening on a website as it's being used. This is great for passively understanding what's happening, actively capturing full context bug reports, or general collaboration with your team on how a site is working. To achieve this, we provide a browser extension for anyone to install and start using instantly.
How to start?
- Add the extension to Chrome from the Chrome Web Store.
- Visit the site you're interested in Observing.
- Click the Web Observer extension icon on the browser, then select "Toggle Web Observer" to turn it on for this site.
Boom! You're ready - no coding required!
Chrome Extensions are the only supported extension, currently. Firefox, Edge, and Safari are in the works (right now). Share links will still work and are accessible to all major browsers.
Toggle Web Observer on or off
Web Observer does a lot of work to capture contextually rich details for any website. Because of that, you must toggle on/off Web Observer for the websites you're interested in. This puts Web Observer to work only on the sites you're interested in.
To toggle Web Observer on/off for a specific website:
- Click the browser extension next to the tool bar to see the dropdown.
- Click "Toggle Web Observer" - this will toggles the tool on or off.
After you turn Web Observer on/off it will stay in that state until you toggle it.
Upload and Share
Observations stay on your computer and are not sent to Web Observer unless you upload them.
When you've captured observations that you want to keep or share, simply upload those to your Web Observer account by clicking the Upload Icon 
and then the Upload button.
When you want to share, visit the uploaded observations you want to share, copy the url, and send that url to anyone you would like or put it on that bug ticket for easy context for your team. Don't forget to set proper access, see below.
For privacy and security, there are a few options for controlling who has access to Observations. Here's how the share preferences differ in their access they provide others:
- "Only me" - Only the owner of the observations can see them. Default
- "Anyone with a link" - Anyone with a link can view the observations.
- "Only invited" - Specify a list of emails that can view these observations. Those emails must have Web Observer accounts to verify they own that email