CareAR Release 25.03- Application and Platform

Overview of Release 25.03

Release 25.03 of the CareAR Applications and Platform include the following enhancements and activities:

• Redesigned Portal Home Screen
• CareAR Assist Captions
• CareAR Assist Transcriptions
• CareAR Assist Host Zoom
• CareAR Assist Host Survey
• CareAR Assist Logged-In Guest Support
• CareAR Assist Camera Flip
• Six-15 ST1 Capability
• Join option to explicitly select/deselect mobile native app
• CareAR Web API Availability
• CareAR Insight (BETA)

New Features

Redesigned Portal Home Screen

We’ve redesigned the portal home screen to help with usability and present a consistent set of capabilities to users that relate to the types of activities that they are likely to want to do when they log in to CareAR.com. The redesign makes it simple and obvious to:

1. Host an Assist session,
2. Join an established Assist session,
3. Explore published Instruct Experiences that you are permitted to view, and
4. Get help and learn more about CareAR.

Additionally, we present up front the information about the tenant’s name, the primary admin, and the user account the user is logged in as.

This redesign of the home screen experience will make it easier for first-time users or casual users to get more from the solution, more quickly.

CareAR Assist Captions

When enabled, captions automatically transcribe the conversation during a CareAR Assist session, displaying the text on your screen in real time. This is especially useful if you or a participant are in a noisy environment, like a factory floor or a server room. It ensures everyone can follow along and fully engage in the conversation, even when it's difficult to hear. It’s helpful, too, for participants who may have challenges speaking the spoken language in the session; often it’s easier to see the written form of your non-native language for better understanding.

A user of the CareAR Assist application can easily enable captions.

1. Click the ellipsis menu (...) in your session.
2. Select Start Captions.
3. Choose the Spoken language for the call.

Once enabled, captions will appear automatically for the participant. If you prefer to read the captions in a different language, you can change your individual display language at any time by setting the Captions Language. This activates the captions to be translated to your preferred displayed language.

Note that captions is a local feature, meaning that by activating, it is only activated for the user enabling it – not for all users in the session. That said, there can only be one spoken language set for the session across all participants; if it needs to be changed, it is set for all users in the Assist session. (This may be obvious as typically all participants would speak – or attempt to speak – the same language in the Assist session.)

The list of languages supported for Spoken Language and for Captions Language are documented below, for each of the supported CareAR applications:

The flow of how to turn on and manage captions is shown below.

We are confident that captions will help you and your teams collaborate more effectively, no matter the environment.

CareAR Assist Transcriptions

Hosts of Assist sessions now have the option to create a transcription of the Assist session. Transcriptions automatically create a text record of the spoken conversation that takes place during a CareAR Assist session. This can be a valuable tool for:

• Reviewing key details: Easily refer to what was discussed, including technical instructions, decisions, or important information.
• Training and quality assurance: Analyze sessions to improve processes, train new team members, or ensure consistent service delivery.
• Archiving and documentation: Maintain a searchable record of conversations for future reference or compliance purposes.

The transcription is saved as a .vtt file, a standard format for storing timed text data, and can be downloaded from the CareAR Assist session report. You can open a .vtt file with any text editor to view the transcription. You can also use it to add captions to a video recording of the session. The host can start and stop transcription at any time. If done repeatedly during a session (making more than one transcription), then a .vtt file is created for each transcription action.

To find your transcription, simply navigate to the session report in your CareAR portal after the call has ended. From there, you will be able to download the .vtt file containing the conversation transcript.

The flow of how to turn transcriptions work is shown below.

We believe the transcription feature will be a powerful addition to your toolkit, helping you to get more value out of every CareAR Assist session.

It may be helpful to have a deeper understanding of the mechanics of the transcription function. Once the host starts the transcription, after 30 seconds, the host’s CareAR app sends the transcribed data (for that segment) to the CareAR back end. The transcription file (.VTT) is opened and filled with that first segment of information. After another 30 seconds passes, the host’s CareAR app repeats the operation, appending the data to the opened file. When the host stops the transcription, the fle is updated and then closed. The following diagram describes this process over time:

A host may choose to create more than one transcription in each Assist session. The end result is multiple transcription files. The following diagram illustrates an Assist session with 2 such files:

On rare occasions, the host may abnormally exit the session (e.g., forced app termination, prolonged loss of connectivity, mobile device’s battery loses charge, application crash). In this scenario, the system will compile the .VTT transcription file using the data it has on hand. Note that it may take up to 24 hours for the final file to be written. See the following diagram for an illustration.

The last scenario is even more rare: within the first 30 seconds of the transcription starting, the host abnormally exits – again, from forced app termination, prolonged loss of connectivity, mobile device’s battery loses charge, application crash). For the mobile app in this scenario, no transcription data is collected whatsoever. For the desktop host appSee the following diagram for an illustration.

CareAR Assist Host Zoom

Previously available only on our native desktop apps for Windows and macOS, the zoom feature is now fully supported in the desktop web-based version of CareAR Assist.

This feature allows you to zoom in on the video stream from your streaming guest's device, giving you a closer look at important details. Whether you're inspecting a small component, reading a serial number, or troubleshooting a wiring issue, the ability to zoom in provides a clearer and more precise view. This makes it easier to guide your customer or technician through a complex task with greater accuracy.

Using the new zoom feature is easy and intuitive:

1. During a live CareAR Assist session in your web browser, look for the magnifying glass icon on your screen.
2. Click the magnifying glass icon to enable the zoom controls.
3. Adjust the slider to your preferred zoom level.

We believe this enhancement will provide a more detailed and effective remote assistance experience, helping you solve problems faster and with more confidence.

CareAR Assist Host Survey

This new feature brings the ability to complete host surveys wen using the desktop browser app, a capability previously limited to our native desktop applications.

When a host survey has been configured for your organization using the CareAR Survey Builder, it will now automatically be presented to you at the conclusion of a CareAR Assist session in the browser. This allows for a more streamlined and comprehensive workflow, helping you capture valuable feedback and data immediately after a call.

Just as before on the native desktop app, the survey will appear in your host interface after the session has ended. Simply complete the questions as prompted to provide your feedback. The survey data is then stored and available for analysis in the CareAR Portal, providing you and your team with insights into your remote assistance sessions.

This enhancement ensures that all hosts, whether using the desktop or browser client, can seamlessly participate in the data collection process, contributing to a more complete picture of your service operations.

CareAR Assist Logged In Guest Support

The legacy desktop native app provides support for users to join as an authenticated guest participant in a session – that is, someone with a CareAR account can join when logged in as a participant. This capability has now been extended to the desktop browser app, helping to complete feature parity between both applications. It’s not uncommon for a second user (or more), using the desktop browser app, to join the session to provide consultation or simply to observe.

CareAR Assist Camera Flip

There are certain devices (e.g., Panasonic's Toughbook) that are so-called "two-in-one" devices where they can transform between being a table to being a notebook or laptop computer. Such devices generally have both front and back cameras. With that in mind, we introduce support for a front/back camera toggle in the desktop browser application (when two or more cameras are detected) and mobile browser web application. View this as a simple "camera flip" capability. Ideally, we present this tool only when both front and back cameras are detected. Generally, we assume that both front and back cameras are always present on the device running the mobile browser app.

The camera flip enhancement works like this:

1. Request permissions to access the camera(s) once.
2. Detect if there are two cameras (front and back). We expect 95% of the time that only one camera will be detected on the desktop device. Obviously, mobile devices will have both front and back cameras.
3. Note the camera icon is now clickable for the desktop browser app users. Before this release, it was not clickable for the desktop browser app user. Optimally, when the user clicks the “open camera” icon, if a back camera is detected, open the back camera. Else, open the front camera. There may be scenarios where it is impossible to distinguish front and back cameras; in this case the toggle/cycle icon permits the user to change cameras.
4. If multiple cameras are detected, we make visible an icon to allow the user to change cameras.

When possible, the default shall always be the have the back camera selected when available.

This shall be available to:

• Hosts of Assist sessions on a desktop browser
• Anonymous guests of Assist sessions on a desktop browser or mobile browser
• Authenticated guests of Assist sessions on a desktop browser (new to this release)

Six-15 Head-Mounted Display (ST1) Capability

You can now use the Six-15 ST1 during a CareAR Assist session when you run the mobile app on Android. This integration allows your field workers to operate completely hands-free, which is critical for complex tasks where they need both hands to complete the work safely and efficiently. By wearing the Six-15 ST1, they can see the remote expert's guidance, augmented reality annotations, and instructions right in their field of view while keeping their hands free to work.

Getting started is simple: just install the CareAR mobile app on the Android mobile phone that will be used with the Six-15 ST1. Once the app is installed, you can launch and conduct a CareAR Assist session as you normally would.

We are excited to bring the following key features to the Six-15 ST1:

• Streams video into CareAR Assist session for host and participants to view and collaborate
• Auto-detect and auto-select the Six-15 head-mounted display when present
• Live video laser pointer tool
• Video recording
• Still image snapshots
• Pause-to-annotate

We believe this integration will significantly enhance productivity and safety for your teams in the field.

Improved Scanned Images Upload Speed

For content creators who build visual verification flows, we were able to improve the speed of the upload of scanned images from the CareAR mobile app.

Join option to explicitly select/deselect mobile native app

We've long supported the ability for a CareAR tenant administrator to configure whether they want guests of an Assist session to be able to join either by browser or with smart glasses. By default, the CareAR app is always an option for all Assist guests to use. You could never not let someone only join by the browser app. To enable this choice, we delivered an intermediate step to let the user choose the way they join.

This enhancement introduces the capability to remove the CareAR app as an option. We've added a toggle in the Admin portal under the Administration > Join Controls screen. The toggle is Guest join by native app with default set to enabled.

So, if the Guest joins by native app is disabled and only Guest join by browser is enabled, then when the user taps the link presented in the invitation, the user will be taken immediately into the session using the CareAR Assist for Browser app; in this scenario, the landing page (where different join options are presented) will not be presented. This is optimal for customers who prefer their users to always join via the mobile browser app. Similarly, if your use cases is mainly (or entirely) for the field service technician use case where the guests always authenticate, you can force them to join via the mobile native app.

The consequence of this change is that we only display the landing page when two or more of the join options are enabled OR if join by smart glasses is enabled. When you want to drive the guest to join only by one method, you can avoid the landing page and carry the guest directly into the session.

Here’s a view of what the updated Join Controls screen looks like:

CareAR Web API Availability

We've opened access to the CareAR Web API to make it available to all tenant holders, regardless of plan type, etc. This affords all our customers the opportunity to create integrations to extend their service workflows.

CareAR Insight (BETA)

We're excited to announce the release of CareAR Insight, a new BETA feature that will transform how experts troubleshoot and resolve issues. CareAR Insight is an AI-powered agent designed to provide both in-session guidance, ad hoc guidance, and information to help you work faster and more efficiently.

What is CareAR Insight?

CareAR Insight acts as an AI assistant for the expert during a CareAR Assist session or outside an Assist session. It's built on a sophisticated AI framework called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This means it doesn't just rely on its general knowledge; it is "grounded" in your organization's specific knowledge base.

To put it simply, you can provide CareAR Insight with your enterprise's internal documents, like:

• Product manuals
• Troubleshooting guides
• Technical specifications
• Standard operating procedures

These documents can be in common formats such as .pdf, .docx, .pptx, .txt, .html, and .md. The AI agent can then access this information in real-time during a session or in an ad hoc basis to provide accurate, relevant answers to your questions, helping you quickly resolve issues without having to search through files manually.

How to Get Started

CareAR Insight is being released as a BETA feature and is not enabled by default. If you are interested in participating in the CareAR Insight BETA and helping us shape the future of AI-powered remote assistance, please reach out to your CareAR representative. They will be able to enable the feature for your tenant and provide you with more details on how to get started.