Video Conferencing Team Collaboration Collaboration Devices Engineering

Preparing for screen sharing: How to reduce risk when sharing your screen

Oct 26, 2020 — Webex Team

Reducing the risk of delays when sharing your screen

As more workers move outside of traditional offices, they’re also outgrowing the collaboration tools that were once staples of those environments, namely email and in-person meetings. Taking the place of those modes of communication are newer forms of teamwork, centered on real-time services for voice, video , and screen sharing.

The screen share in particular is a vital replacement for the old workflow of gathering everyone into a room and turning on a projector to walk them through a slide deck or other asset. But it’s not without its potential complications. Distractions, technical hiccups, or simply choosing confusingly designed software can waste a lot of time.

What can you do to reduce the risk of delays when sharing your screen? Fortunately, there’s no shortage of options for leading a more focused session. Let’s look at some of the most dependable tips for a risk-free screen share.

Share just one window or application

Sharing your entire screen probably feels like the easiest and most practical way to lead a screen share, and in some cases, it is. For example, if you’re leading an in-depth demonstration of how to use a certain built-in feature in macOS or Microsoft Windows, then sharing the full desktop is logical, as you’ll need to walk the audience through where to find everything.

However, this type of screen sharing can also be risky, since it puts everything into public view. Watchers may be able to see what’s on your desktop, notifications from your apps, and even sensitive information like login credentials if you open your password manager.

To avoid these pitfalls, consider sharing just one application or desktop at a time. This way, you limit what can be seen while still being able to share the content you need to show. Webex Teams makes it straightforward to select which screen or app to show at any time.

Take advantage of meeting controls

Your screen share is going great — and then someone strange joins the meeting and starts talking or trying to show their own screen or video feed. Such disruptions have become more common as remote work in general and video conferencing applications in particular have both risen in popularity.

For this reason, it’s important to use built-in meeting controls to keep proceedings on track with as few distractions as possible. Some of the most important practices include:

Enforce password entry: Make sure to enable password requirements as needed to reduce the risk of unauthorized logins.
Lock the meeting once everyone is in it: Similarly, you can prevent anyone else from joining by locking the session. If you need to let legitimate attendees in later, you can unlock temporarily.
Control who the presenter is: As the host, you have the power to change the presenter or reclaim the role for yourself at any time.
Mute audio: Is someone’s excessive background noise making the screen share unbearable? Curbing it is as simple as using a mute button to silence their audio.

Turn off notifications

Notifications are important, but they can usually wait until after the screen share is over. A notification that arrives in the middle of a screen share can not only be a huge distraction, but a data leakage risk as well.

Think about all the notifications related to sensitive matters like one-time login codes and two-factor authentication, as well as online purchases, and personal messages. If they’re not turned off, you’re rolling the dice each time you lead a screen share.

Notifications can be turned off systemwide or app-by-app on all modern operating systems. Once the screen share is over, you can easily re-enable them.

Organize desktop and browser appearance

A disorganized desktop or a browser with a bunch of tabs open can be much more than an eyesore — it can also be a data security hazard, for the same reasons as unchecked notifications. A stray tab or document can divulge sensitive information. Plus, in the case of the browser, it can take a toll on system performance, too.

Consider cleaning up your desktop prior to leading a screen share. This can be as simple as using a feature like Stacks in macOS, or just creating a separate clean desktop on Windows and then presenting from there.

Fine-tune application performance

Screen sharing is a real-time process, making technical performance paramount. Software for screen sharing is usually well optimized for displaying the presenter’s screen and video, but multiple issues are still possible and can affect the presentation.

To get the best possible performance, first consider closing any unneeded applications and background processes, as the ongoing syncing of cloud services like Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive can consume a lot of bandwidth. Also make sure you’re close enough to your Wi-Fi router or access point, or have an Ethernet connection set up for the most reliable connectivity.

Get started with better screen sharing in Webex

Webex provides an immersive screen sharing experience that lets you connect with as many, or as few, participants as you need to and lead them through a crystal-clear presentation.