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SopWow
SopWow
Do the work once. Get the SOP forever.

Install the recorder

The SopWow recorder is a small browser extension. Pick your computer and browser for the exact steps.

Add it to Chrome

Works on any computer · about two minutes

  1. Download the setup script
  2. Run it. Double-click Setup-SOPWOW.cmd in Downloads. Windows may say the publisher couldn't be verified. Click Run. A black window appears, does its work, and tells you when to move to the browser.It downloads the recorder, puts it in a permanent folder, and copies that folder to your clipboard. No password or admin rights needed.
  3. In Chrome, type chrome://extensions into the address bar and press Enter.
  4. Turn on Developer mode: the switch at the top right.
  5. Click Load unpacked. In the window that opens, press Ctrl+V to paste the folder, then Enter.
  6. SOPWOW Recorder appears in the list, switched on, with a version number. That's the install done.
  7. Pin it to the toolbar. Click the puzzle-piece icon to the right of the address bar, find SOPWOW Recorder, and click the pin beside it. The icon stays in your toolbar, and that icon is how you start and stop every recording.

Two things that look wrong and aren't: Chrome may warn about developer mode extensions each time it starts. Close the message, but don't turn the extension off. And the SopWow icon does nothing while you are on chrome://extensions, because browsers block extensions on their own settings pages. Open an ordinary web page and it wakes up.

Rather not run a script?
Download SOPWOW-Recorder.zip and unzip it somewhere permanent: right-click → Extract All…, with the destination C:\Users\<your name>\SOPWOW. Then follow steps 3 to 6 above, choosing the SOPWOW-Recorder folder it produced, the one holding manifest.json. Not Downloads: your browser loads the recorder from that folder at every launch, so it has to stay put.

Connect your workspace

  1. Right-click the SopWow icon in the toolbar → Options.
  2. Paste your workspace token. It starts with sopw_. Create one in the portal under Get set up, or ask whoever runs your SopWow workspace for one.
  3. Click Save and test. It should say Connected.

Record your first SOP

One rule: the tab you press Start in is the tab that gets recorded. Get to the page first, then press Start.

  1. Go to the page where you do the work and let it finish loading. A brand-new tab is fine; just browse to the page first. The only pages that can't be recorded are the browser's own: a blank new tab, a settings page, a web store, a PDF.No page in mind? Use the practice workflow, a fake order desk built for exactly this.
  2. Click the SopWow icon in the toolbar. If you can't see it, it's behind the puzzle-piece icon. Pin it.
  3. Type what you are about to do in “What are you about to do?”, for example “Add a new supplier” or “Issue a refund”. That line becomes the SOP's title and steers the whole draft, so it earns a moment's thought.
  4. Click Start recording. Two things tell you it's running: a red REC badge on the toolbar icon, and a red bar on the page reading “REC · SOPWOW is capturing this page”. If you don't see both, it isn't recording that page.
  5. Do the task at normal speed. Clicks and screenshots are captured; what you type never is. If a click opens a new tab, that tab is recorded too. If you open a tab yourself (Ctrl+T, or a bookmark), it is not: you'll see a grey bar saying “Not recording this tab”. Go back to the tab with the red bar.
  6. Finished? Click the SopWow icon again → Stop & generate SOP.
  7. Wait a minute or two. The review page opens by itself when the draft is ready, with steps, screenshots, and the decisions it noticed. The SOP also appears in your portal.

Told that nothing was captured? Then no clicks happened in the recorded tab, usually because the work was done in a different tab from the one Start was pressed in. Nothing is lost; just record it again.

Company-managed computer? Install it by policy

A browser policy makes Chrome install the recorder itself and keep it up to date, with no folder and no developer mode. Browsers only accept that on a computer your IT team manages: joined to a company domain or to Microsoft Entra ID. On a personal computer nothing installs, and Chrome starts saying it's “managed by your organization”. If that's you, use step 1 instead.

  1. Download Install-SOPWOW.ps1.
  2. Right-click it → Run with PowerShell, and click Yes when Windows asks for administrator permission.
  3. Open chrome://policy and click Reload policies. The recorder appears within about a minute. Then connect your workspace (step 2).

For IT

Deploy with Group Policy, Intune or your MDM by adding this entry to ExtensionInstallForcelist for Chrome and Edge:

dlbdjooclmhjccphhkdlliinhbfopijh;https://dl.sopwow.com/update.xml

Registry: a numbered string value under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\ExtensionInstallForcelist and HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge\ExtensionInstallForcelist. All installer files (Windows and Mac, with uninstallers).

Troubleshooting

How do I know it’s actually recording?
The toolbar icon carries a red REC badge, and the page shows a red bar reading “REC · SOPWOW is capturing this page”. A grey bar saying “Not recording this tab” means you are in a different tab from the one you pressed Start in. That tab is still being recorded, so switch back to it.
Where did it install? I can’t find the folder
C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\SOPWOW\SOPWOW-Recorder. Windows hides AppData in File Explorer, so you won't see it by browsing, and you don't need to, because the setup script put the path on your clipboard. To look anyway, paste the path into Explorer's address bar. You can confirm it worked a simpler way: the setup script prints [ok] Installed to … only after checking the files are really there.
Windows won’t run the setup script
Right-click Setup-SOPWOW.cmd → Properties. At the bottom of the General tab, beside “This file came from another computer”, tick Unblock, click OK, and double-click it again.
“Running scripts is disabled on this system”
That's PowerShell's execution policy, and it's switched off on many work and server machines. Use Setup-SOPWOW.cmd instead. It doesn't use PowerShell at all. If you would rather stay in PowerShell, run powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\Setup-SOPWOW.ps1 from the folder holding the script. Note too that double-clicking a .ps1 only opens Notepad, and Windows 11 hides Run with PowerShell under Show more options.
Which browsers does it work in?
Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi and Opera: anything built on Chromium. The steps are the same; only the address changes (brave://extensions, and so on). Firefox and Safari are not supported.
“Load unpacked” isn’t there
Developer mode is off. It's the switch at the top right of chrome://extensions. If the switch is greyed out, your organization has turned it off. Ask IT to install SopWow by policy instead.
“Manifest file is missing or unreadable”
The folder you chose isn't the extension. Pick the SOPWOW-Recorder folder that holds manifest.json. The setup script copies the right one to your clipboard.
The recorder disappeared after a restart
Its folder was moved, renamed or deleted. Put it back, open chrome://extensions and load it again, or just run the setup script once more.
“This page can’t be captured”
Browsers bar extensions from settings pages, the web stores, and PDFs, and a new tab counts too. Recording is still running: go to the page you actually work in, in that same tab, and capture starts on its own.
It says “managed by your organization” but no recorder appeared
The policy installer ran on a computer IT doesn't manage, so Chrome ignored it. Undo it with the uninstaller in the installer files, then follow step 1.
Removing SopWow
Open chrome://extensions, click Remove on SOPWOW Recorder, then delete its folder. To cut off its access too, revoke the token in the portal under Get set up.