The Collaboration Dialog allows two users to share information
over linked browser sessions. Use this topic to understand how the
Collaboration Dialog works.
The Collaboration Dialog widget is used by the ClickToCall, CallNotification,
and Cobrowse widgets to provide peer-to-peer page sharing and allow
one user to control a collaboration session. With the Collaboration
Dialog, page sharing is not screen sharing because each browser makes
its own connection to the server for the content.
The Collaboration Dialog interface has three parts. At the top
of a Web page, the widget toolbar shows the browser and collaboration
controls for driving the peer-to-peer session. The content pane is
in the middle of the page, which is the area that loads the pages
that can be shared with the peer. A footer bar at the bottom of the
page displays status information for the collaboration session.
Figure 1. Collaboration Dialog toolbar
Figure 2. Collaboration Dialog footer bar
When two users are involved in a collaboration session, the initiator
of the session has control and is the active peer. The passive peer
can see the actions taken by the active peer. If the Grant
Control option (see Collaboration controls) is used, then
the active and passive roles can switch. Only one user can have control
at a time.
Browser controls
The Collaboration
Dialog give users the following controls to enable page navigation:
- Click the Back icon to go back one page.
If Follow Me is enabled, the peer's window
is also updated to load the same page.
- Click the Forward icon to go forward one
page. If Follow Me is enabled, the peer's window
is also updated to load the same page.
- Click the Refresh icon to reload the current
page. If Follow Me is enabled, the peer's window
is also updated to reload the same page.
- Type a URL into the Location bar and press enter to browse to
the page. This URL must be on the same domain as the page used to
display the Collaboration Dialog.
Collaboration controls
The
Collaboration Dialog toolbar contains the following collaboration
controls:
Send Page, Follow Me, Grant Control,
and
Highlight.
- The Send Page icon allows the active peer,
the user driving the collaboration session, to send the URL of the
current page to the passive peer. The send page function is useful
when the active peer only needs to show the peer certain pages and
not the path taken to browse to that page. To send the page, click
the Send Page icon and the current URL of the
page is sent to the passive peer.
Remember: The following behavior applies to the send page function:
- The URL of the current page is sent and not the current text in
the Location bar.
- Any customization on the current page, for example, a highlight
or any changes to the page made from Ajax requests, are reset when
the page reloads.
- The Follow Me icon allows the active peer
to send clicks to the passive peer. The Collaboration Dialog widget
captures any clicks that the active peer makes on the page when Follow
Me is enabled. This information is then sent to the passive peer to
simulate the clicks in their Collaboration Dialog. To stop sending
this information, the active peer toggles the Follow Me control.
The follow me function is useful when:
- The active peer needs to show the passive peer how to navigate
to a page.
- Navigating sites that are built using Web 2.0 technologies; for
example, sites using Ajax-style requests to update content instead
of full page refreshes.
- The Grant Control icon allows the active
peer to transfer control to the passive peer, providing the passive
peer has the appropriate permission to drive the collaboration session.
Once the active and passive roles are switched, the new active peer
will have their collaboration controls enabled. If the passive peer
does not have permission to drive the collaboration session, the Grant
Control icon remains disabled.
- The Highlight icon allows the active peer
to highlight a section of the page currently displayed by the Collaboration
Dialog. This information is then sent to the peer, and the same section
is highlighted on their page. Both the active peer and the passive
peer can perform highlights. To perform a highlight, click the Highlight icon,
and then move the cursor over the section of the page to be highlighted.
As the cursor moves, the sections change color to show what can be
highlighted. Once the user is at the section they want to highlight,
left-click to send the highlight to the peer.
Collaboration Dialog status
The
Collaboration Dialog has the following status indicators in the footer
bar:
- The Connection status icon displays the
connection status of the Collaboration Dialog. When either peer disconnects,
this status is updated to show the disconnected status. States included
are: Connected and Disconnected.
- The Peer Window status icon updates as
either peer opens and closes their Collaboration Dialog. States included
are: Peer window is open and Peer window is closed.
- The Collaboration Action status icon displays
collaboration action and whether the user is currently controlling
the session. States included are: Controlling navigation, Cobrowsing
web, Follow me, and Coauthoring form.
Avoid trouble:
- When URLs are passed between the Collaboration Dialog peers using
the Send Page function, the entire URL is sent to the peer. If the
browser for the active peer is on the same machine as the server,
and the active peer uses local host to access the server, this environment
causes issues for the passive peer if they are on separate machines.
Because the entire URL is passed, the passive peer attempts to access
the page using local host and a failure occurs.
When you test the
Collaboration Dialog, and the browsers are on separate machines, you
must specify the host name or IP address of the server that is accessible
to both peers in the URL instead of the local host. This process is
necessary under the following conditions:
- When you access a page that contains an embedded widget
- When you enter addresses into the Location Bar of the Collaboration
Dialog
New feature: CEA V1.0.0.1
adds a new attribute to all the widgets that allows the application
to provide the name of a callback JavaScript™ function:
- sendPageUrlRewriteCallback
- A string containing the name of the callback function to execute
when send page is called to rewrite the current URL.
This is useful when the peers are accessing the application
on different domains or through a proxy.
newfeat
- If you want to browse pages by way of Hypertext Transfer Protocol
Secure (HTTPS) using the Collaboration Dialog, the page containing
the embedded CEA widget must also be accessed by means of HTTPS. If
you launch one of the CEA widgets from a page accessed through HTTP,
and then during the Collaboration Dialog session you view a page through
HTTPS, the Follow Me and Highlight functionality will not work for
that page due to the JavaScript same
origin policy. This same issue occurs if you load the page containing
the embedded CEA widget through HTTPS, and then you try to view a
page in the Collaboration Dialog through HTTP.
gotcha