Step-by-step Cobrowse Session Workflow

1. When a cobrowse session starts, Cobrowse.js sends a StartCobrowse request to the Glance Cloud infrastructure. Cobrowse.js passes your Glance group ID, and receives a unique session ID, a Cobrowse session server assignment, and the list of masked fields.

   The session id consists of three components:

   1. Your group ID
   2. A session key
   3. A random number for uniqueness

2. Cobrowse.js stores the session ID and the set of masked fields in a browser session cookie, and proceeds to start uploading session data to the designated Cobrowse session server (CServer). It also sends session resources that the agent might need. These resources are files referenced in the session HTML such as font files, style sheets, icons, and images.

3. The CServer posts a message to the Glance web server and informs it that a session has started. Both group id and session key are required to join a session. Once logged in, the group id can be determined based on the agent’s Glance group membership.

   As for the session key, there are several ways it might be specified on the agent side. The session key might be a randomly assigned string, or might be some piece of information associated with the visitor, such as user id or a tracking cookie id embedded in your web page.

   The agent might enter the session key manually, or it might be extracted automatically for the agent from data in a CRM record.

   Either way, the result is that the agent opens a browser window to the URL:

   https://www.glance.net/cobrowse/AgentView.aspx?SessionKey=ssnkey

4. If not logged in, the agent is prompted to log in and is then redirected back to the agent view. AgentView.aspx looks up the session in the database by agent group ID and session key and redirects the agent to the appropriate CServer. In turn that CServer generates the agent view of the session. The agent view includes an embedded JavaScript file, AgentView.js, which communicates with the CServer via both HTTPS and secure WebSockets.

5. The CServer sends only HTML markup for the browsing session to the agent browser. Resources referenced by the session HTML, such as images or style sheets, are downloaded by the agent directly from the your website when possible.

NOTE: If downloading those resources is not possible (maybe due to CORS restrictions) AgentView.js requests them from the CServer to ensure the agent's view of your website is displayed appropriately.