The Chrome capture extension

SOPCompass Capture turns a task you do in any web app into a step-by-step guide. Each click, choice and form field becomes a step with a screenshot and a box around what you clicked. Nothing is published until you review it in SOPCompass.

Only editors who want to record web tasks need it. Viewers never do.

Requirements

• Google Chrome, or another Chromium browser such as Microsoft Edge, Brave or Arc, version 116 or later, on a computer.
• The editor, admin or owner role in at least one workspace.

Install

The extension isn’t on the Chrome Web Store yet, so it is installed by hand. This takes about a minute.

1. In SOPCompass, open Capture (or go to app.sopcompass.com/capture) and press Download the extension. Unzip the file and keep the folder somewhere it won’t be deleted, like Documents.
2. In Chrome, go to chrome://extensions.
3. Turn on Developer mode at the top right.
4. Press Load unpacked and choose the unzipped sopcompass-capture folder.
5. Open the puzzle piece menu in the toolbar and pin SOPCompass Capture.

The Capture page shows Installed with the version once it detects the extension.

Connect it to your account

You never type your password into the extension.

1. Click the SOPCompass Capture icon and choose Connect.
2. A SOPCompass tab opens. Sign in if you need to, then approve the connection.
3. The tab closes itself and the extension is connected.

Behind the scenes, SOPCompass gives the extension its own access key. That key:

• lasts 8 hours, then you connect again;
• is stored only in the browser’s memory and is gone when Chrome quits;
• can only list the workspaces, libraries and SOPs you can edit (names only), start a capture, add steps and screenshots to your own running capture, and stop it;
• can’t read SOP content, edit anything or publish;
• re-checks that you are still an editor on every request.

Capture a task

1. Open the page where the task starts.
2. Click the extension icon. Pick the workspace, then either an existing SOP or a new SOP in a library, and press Start capture.
3. Do the task as you normally would. A bar at the bottom right of the page shows Capturing and counts the steps, and the extension icon shows the count too. Pause any time.
4. Press Stop and review.

Review and publish

The review page opens in SOPCompass. There you can:

• edit the wording of any step;
• reorder steps with the buttons, or Alt and the up or down arrow on a focused step;
• delete steps or screenshots;
• add a note step for context the clicks don’t explain;
• optionally let the AI tidy the wording (up to 20 times a day, not while a capture is still recording);
• publish, which adds the steps as a card in the SOP you picked.

Unpublished captures wait on the Capture page under Waiting for your review. Nobody else can see them.

What it records

More detail on privacy:

• Typed values are never recorded. Email addresses, phone numbers and long numbers in labels are replaced with [email], [phone] and [number], in the extension and again on the server.
• Page addresses are shortened to the site and path, with anything after ? or # removed and record ids replaced by :id.
• Screenshots are only taken while a capture is running, only in the tab you started in and tabs it opens, and the on-page bar is always visible then. The bar is hidden from the screenshots themselves.
• Anything else on screen will be in the screenshot, such as a customer’s name. Delete that screenshot in review if it shouldn’t be shared.
• Pages can’t fake steps. The extension ignores events a page creates by script.

Disconnect

• In the extension popup, choose Disconnect.
• On the Capture page in the app, press Disconnect the extension everywhere to cut off every browser you connected.

Limits

• Clicks inside embedded frames aren’t recorded; only the main page is.
• Chrome’s own pages, the Chrome Web Store and PDFs can’t be captured.
• 200 steps per capture and 20 captures per person per day.
• Screenshots upload as you go. If Chrome closes mid-upload, the step in flight can be lost; everything already uploaded is safe.