It’s been a while since I’ve written up an entry in the Delightful Collaboration series.  Though it may look like it’s only the 11th time (judging by the roman numeral above), acting on the input of our community to make CA better happens roughly once a week!

This one comes from Michiel Bosman of Open Forest Evidence-Based Online Coaching.  He wrote:

I am probably asking for the impossible, but this is very important to me from a privacy/NDA standpoint: I do a lot of CA screen sharing with my clients.

I would love to have a Single Client Mode: I click a checkbox, system will not show anything related to any other client, until I click that checkbox again.

This immediately jumped out at me as interesting.  CoachAccountable has always had the power to serve as a de facto shared, virtual workspace between coach and client.  Coach sharing his or her screen with client (or vice-versa) is a powerful way to invite structured collaboration (e.g. during a session, when actions are being planned, insights are being captured, and so forth).

But I really appreciate the abundance of caution that this request entails.  Indeed, when it’s coach doing the screen sharing, well, there’s a LOT of other data that coach can bring up with a click or two (a convenience that is quite intentional!), yet much of it is data that’s NOT suitable for a given client to see.

So I get the desire for a sort of “single client mode”: that power to accidentally wander over into another part of the system not meant for a client’s eyes could make the prospect of sharing your screen nerve wracking.

We’re always keen to make CA more thoroughly accommodating to expectations of privacy and confidentiality, for they are expectations that such sensitive work truly merits.  To that end, I present to Michiel and the rest of the CA community what we call “Client Present Mode”.

Client Present Mode is a mode you can activate when viewing a given Client Page¹.

You’ll find the toggle button for it by hovering your mouse over the very bottom region of the left sidebar of a given client page. (On a touch device, simply tap in that bottom region to reveal it.)

Move your mouse on down to that bottom portion of the left sidebar, and the toggle button appears.

Activating Client Present Mode hides the following:

• navigation links,
• the top client search,
• private items,
• private comments,
• private side notes,
• other pages (if visited),
• and other distractions.

Generally speaking, it makes everything in your CoachAccountable browser window appropriate for your client to see in a screen sharing scenario.

It even hides those little light bulb icons, because you’re PROBABLY not meaning to peruse the help articles while working with your client. :)

If you hit the browser back button or reload the page?  Things remain appropriately locked, until you exit present mode.  Instead of seeing any potentially sensitive content, you’ll see this:

Tough but fair.

And that’s all there is to it!  Client Present Mode makes it so you can confidently share your screen with your client (whether or not you post non-shared-with-client content), AND eliminates the possibility of accidentally showing a client the wrong thing through accidental navigation.

I’m excited for how this makes in-app collaborative work with clients more universally appropriate, and what that will enable coaches to bring through co-creation of insights and steps to move forward.  Thanks Michiel for putting this on our radar!