Highly distributed environment creates collaboration challenges

Atolio developed a unique workplace search solution designed to connect every app, service, and asset across a business and enable employees to access the information they need whenever they need it. “People use so many different tools at work and create so much content today. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find information scattered throughout organizations, especially large enterprises,” says Atolio cofounder and CTO Gareth Watts.

In response, Atolio developed a unique approach to the problem that leverages a collaborative graph and includes the use of artificial intelligence and large language models to provide fast, relevant search results which connect with the apps and services that teams already use. This results in a single, unified search experience amongst teams.

Atolio’s fully remote engineering team works from various places across the US and Canada. The company works on a two-week sprint cycle, and rapidly deploys to customers’ environments. But working as a distributed team across time zones can make collaboration difficult. “We can work asynchronously, but after you've had the conversation, you've done the async work, at some point there's no substitute for working together, having the conversation, and trying to run a problem down in real-time,” says Watts.Watts used other collaboration tools in the past but found them cumbersome. “Text, phone, or Zoom are limited,” he says. “You're still just describing your problem. It's slow and clunky.”

“CoScreen is just part of our day-to-day workflow and a natural way of working. It’s difficult to imagine not having it now.”

Providing a space to connect, communicate, and collaborate

Watts discovered CoScreen by Datadog around the same time Atolio was founded. “I managed to get on the CoScreen early access program. Once I tried it I didn’t want to go back,” he says. “There are other solutions available, but nothing that was designed to work at scale across large geographies. CoScreen worked so well, there was no reason to look elsewhere.”CoScreen makes it easy for distributed engineering teams to pair program and investigate, debug, and resolve issues together in real time. Through high-resolution, near-zero-latency screen sharing and its ability to allow multi-user editing within any shared window, CoScreen gives developers a digital workspace to connect, communicate, and collaborate more effectively. “I don't just want to share my screen with somebody,” says Watts. “I want to have that ‘sitting next to them’ experience. When I came across CoScreen, it was a game-changing moment. This is how we will work effectively as a team.”At first, two Atolio engineers used CoScreen. But as the company grew, Watts continued to expand its use. Today, Atolio engineering teams use CoScreen for pair programming, debugging, engineering meetings, one-on-ones, and more. “One-on-ones are great with CoScreen because engineers want to talk about their work and show you what they are working on,” says Watts. “It’s a super fluid way of working and collaborating.”CoScreen also enables engineers to compare the UI experience from two different browsers side-by-side. And it’s a great tool when Watts needs to conduct a PR review because he can walk through the PR in real-time with the engineer and ensure he hasn’t missed anything.

“I don't just want to share my screen with somebody. I want to have that ‘sitting next to them’ experience.”

Enabling fast and effective interactions

CoScreen enables Atolio’s engineering team to combine key technologies in new and meaningful ways to build a product to help companies work more efficiently. “CoScreen enables us to move very quickly and nimbly as we build our product,” says Watts. “If you want to work together effectively and enable multiple people to interact with each other in multiple windows simultaneously, there’s nothing quite like CoScreen. I haven’t encountered anything else that works as reliably and consistently.”

As Atolio has expanded its use of CoScreen, they've seen big improvements in efficiency. “If we didn't have CoScreen, we could still operate, but we wouldn't be as happy, effective, or efficient,” Watts adds.

Ultimately CoScreen is helping Watts overcome the challenges of leading a fully distributed team and finding a balance between working asynchronously and synchronously. “It's become so automatic. CoScreen is just part of our day-to-day workflow and a natural way of working at this point. It’s difficult to imagine not having it now,” he says.

In the future, Watts envisions expanding the use of CoScreen to other parts of the company besides engineering. “I would love to see it expand further throughout the company,” he says. “I think you can make a use case for anyone who needs to collaborate.”