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TL;DR
Both Scribe and Tango capture on-screen processes, but Scribe is built for at-scale documentation and workflow optimization, while Tango’s core use case is in-app, instructive walkthroughs.
Workflow capture tools revolutionize the way teams document processes. Before, teams had to manually re-record their steps any time a workflow changed. Documentation was time-consuming and ripe for human error. If teams didn’t have the bandwidth to properly create and update documentation, they might do it poorly or not at all.
Tools like Scribe and Tango automate what used to be a laborious process, saving teams effort and ensuring accurate, up-to-date, user-friendly outputs. Both tools record workflows as people perform them, outputting a polished guide with minimal human intervention. The guide then serves as a reliable single source of truth on that process, acting as a reference for both new and existing employees.
But each tool takes a different approach to documentation, and only one is the stronger option for your team. Here we’ll compare Scribe and Tango, outlining the key features and differences of each to guide you through the selection process.
Scribe vs. Tango: At-a-glance comparison
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<th>Feature</th>
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<th>Tango</th>
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<td>Auto-generated step-by-step guides from screen recordings</td>
<td class="col-scribe"><span class="check">✔</span></td>
<td><span class="check">✔</span></td>
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<td>Browser and desktop capture</td>
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<td><span class="check">✔</span></td>
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<td>Automatic text-entry capture (form fields, search queries)</td>
<td class="col-scribe"><span class="check">✔</span></td>
<td><span class="dash">–</span></td>
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<td>Export to PDF, Markdown, and HTML</td>
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<td>Interactive in-app walkthroughs (Guide Me — web apps only)</td>
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<td>Workflow efficiency analytics</td>
<td class="col-scribe"><span class="check">✔</span></td>
<td><span class="dash">–</span></td>
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<td>Automatic PII redaction during capture</td>
<td class="col-scribe"><span class="check">✔</span></td>
<td><span class="check">✔</span></td>
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<td>SSO and SCIM (Enterprise)</td>
<td class="col-scribe"><span class="check">✔</span></td>
<td><span class="check">✔</span></td>
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What is Scribe?
Scribe is a Workflow AI platform that helps teams capture processes and understand how work is performed.
Scribe records browser or desktop processes as users go through their workflows, generating step-by-step guides with annotated screenshots and written instructions. Scribe then saves these outputs in a centralized location so that team members can access the information when they need it with a simple search. When a workflow changes, teams can easily re-record the new process, and Scribe will update all instances of existing guides.
Scribe also compiles data on workflow performance, surfacing friction points and rating processes with an opportunity score that signals room for improvement. Leaders can use these insights to make data-backed decisions on workflow modifications that save time and increase accuracy.
What can you create with Scribe?
Scribe outputs annotated guides with text and images that you can reference individually or compile into wide-spanning SOPs. Readily shareable, Scribe documentation can be linked or embedded into Notion or Confluence and exported as a PDF or Markdown file.
Who is Scribe for?
Common Scribe use cases include:
- Onboarding: Human resources personnel use Scribe guides to train new hires.
- Support: IT departments share Scribe documentation with internal team members or customers to walk them through software usage or resolving tech issues.
- Implementations: Business leaders leverage Scribe to document existing processes before configuring them or improving upon them in new software (i.e., during a SAP rollout or a Microsoft 356 implementation).
- Daily operations: Teams of all types use Scribe to create SOPs, including best practices and guides to complex workflows.
- Process improvements: Leaders strategize workflow improvements using Scribe’s data on lagging or broken processes.
What is Tango?
Tango is a process documentation tool that captures desktop and web workflows, generating step-by-step guides with screenshots and written instructions. The platform also offers an interactive “Guide Me” feature that overlays instructions on the screen as users perform processes, walking them through steps in real-time.
What can you create with Tango?
With Tango, you can create both static process guides and dynamic step-by-step walkthroughs that prompt users to type, click, or perform other actions while moving through an on-screen workflow.
Who is Tango for?
Typical Tango use cases include:
- Software adoption: Implementation team leads train users on new software with real-time “Guide Me” walkthroughs.
- Daily operations: Users reference Tango guides when they have questions about process steps.
- Onboarding: New employees follow Tango’s static or dynamic guides when learning a new workflow.
Scribe vs. Tango: Guide creation
One of the core functionalities of both Scribe and Tango is guide creation, but the execution feels different for users. Here’s how.
Scribe
Scribe works quietly in the background as you perform a process, providing a distraction-free capture experience. After cueing the capture, this discreet tool automatically records clicks, keystrokes, and text entries, like search queries or data fills. You never have to interact with the tool, meaning you focus fully on executing the workflow correctly. When you stop capturing, Scribe will output a polished guide that accurately represents the process you performed. While no additional editing is necessary, you can make manual edits to the guide if you wish.
Tango
When you capture with Tango, a sidebar with editing tools appears on your screen. A more user-intensive experience than Scribe’s, Tango’s action box edits give you control over what elements to include in the guide. You can also drop in Pins and Nuggets, call-outs that draw the viewer’s attention to process tips. When you’ve finished creating your guide, Tango will export it either as static documentation or a dynamic “Guide Me” walkthrough.
Scribe vs. Tango: Collaboration and scalability
Workflow documentation is collaborative. Multiple users view and edit guides and uncover new processes to document. Collaboration can quickly become chaotic if organizations don’t have centralized locations for housing documents and best practices for publishing updates. Here’s how both Scribe and Tango tackle these challenges and promote document access and accuracy.
Scribe
As a Workflow AI platform, one of Scribe’s core functionalities is centralized data sharing. Users can save and organize Scribe guides directly in the native knowledge base and use the built-in search to surface documents as needed. And whenever a user re-captures a guide to reflect a change in a workflow, Scribe automatically updates all iterations, ensuring that team members always have the same, up-to-date information. As documentation scales, you never have to worry about accuracy discrepancies across different locations.
Scribe also helps teams optimize workflows by gathering data on how and when guides are used. This data pinpoints adoption gaps and failing processes, enabling leaders to assess suboptimal workflows for bottlenecks and redundancies before offering improvements. So, as your workflow documentation scales, so does your ability to spot and rectify inefficiencies.
Tango
Tango organizes guide outputs into shared libraries, allowing collaborators to view them in a centralized location. That said, because Tango’s primary value proposition is the “Guide Me” functionality, users’ preferred route of consumption isn’t necessarily through those libraries but through in-app walkthroughs.
As viewers move through guides, Tango pulls step-level data on their progress. For example, Tango tracks where users drop off when following a guide, an insight that can point to a confusing step that needs improvement.
And when workflows (or the guides around them) necessitate improvement, users can manually edit existing Tango steps: adding, removing, or re-recording them. Once editing is complete, Tango pushes out updates to all existing guide locations, always showing users the latest version.
How Scribe and Tango handle security and governance
Teams sometimes use documentation software to capture workflows with sensitive information. A sales team might capture a flow with customer data, or an HR team might record an onboarding sequence with employee information. Both Scribe and Tango are SOC 2 Type II certified and GDPR compliant, and Scribe offers HIPAA compliance, as well. Here are a few other ways both tools help keep data safe.
- Access: Tango allows users to assign workspace- and folder-level permissions, while Scribe offers role-based access controls for both folders and guides.
- Data redaction: Scribe uses Smart Blur to automatically redact sensitive information, and you can also edit out this data during post-capture. Tango has a similar feature called Secure Blur that primarily obscures information during capture, though you can also make manual edits after the fact.
- Governance: Scribe has admin controls at all levels of the document lifecycle, mandating document owners to sign off before documentation is published. Tango doesn’t have publication controls but limits visibility on analytics.
Choosing between Scribe and Tango: At-a-glance decision tips
Tango and Scribe features share certain core similarities, so it’s the tools’ differentiators that sway a user to choose one over the other. Here’s a high-level decision matrix to guide you.
Choose Scribe if you need a centralized, searchable library with up-to-date SOP-style information. Scribe is also the right fit if you want actionable analytics on the efficiency of your workflows.
Choose Tango if your priority is guided, in-app walkthroughs, and you need data on where users get stuck.
Better documentation and root processes with Scribe’s Workflow AI
Many leading screen and browser capture tools help you document processes quickly and correctly. But Scribe pushes further, surfacing valuable data on where your workflows hit bottlenecks so that you can improve root processes—not just outline them as-is.
Try Scribe and discover how a Workflow AI platform enables you to capture and share processes for a wide range of use cases, while giving you the information you need to attack underlying process inefficiencies and poor tool adoption.
FAQs
What are the pricing differences between Scribe and Tango?
Scribe’s pricing starts with a free entry-level plan and, from there, a feature-rich plan for individuals and an affordable per-seat plan for teams. Tango also has a free tier and per-seat team plans, in addition to customized enterprise pricing. Tango’s free plan limits workflows (up to 15). Scribe doesn’t limit workflows but gates certain features, giving free users access to the essential capture tools they need to record processes.
Is Scribe or Tango better for internal SOPs?
Scribe is a stronger option for teams building an SOP library, with its workspace-style interface that centralizes up-to-date documentation in one place. Also, Scribe’s static, structured manual outputs serve the SOP use case better than Tango’s “Guide Me” in-app walkthroughs.
Can Scribe and Tango both capture desktop workflows?
Yes, both Scribe and Tango capture desktop workflows. Scribe’s downloadable app can record processes on any application, intelligently delineating steps even in legacy platforms.
Which tool is better for enterprise teams?
While both tools serve enterprise contexts, Scribe is better suited for businesses that need a centralized, governed SOP library with deep content lifecycle management. Tango focuses more heavily on user-adoption scenarios with its in-app process guidance features, but Scribe also works well in these situations, providing up-to-date static guides with easy-to-follow screenshots and annotations to help users through processes.
