"Storyline output" in folder Text when I publish

Hey Tim,

Not sure I fully understand. When you say you're publishing "to an intranet" are you publishing as a Web output or LMS output?

Or do you have the output folder when publishing set to a directory on your intranet's web server?

I'm also curious about the "- Storyline output" text. Is that a .txt file? I can't recall ever hearing or seeing this before.

Hi Kevin

I think Tim is referring to the extension on a published output file

I don't remember SL1 ever adding that - Storyline output to the published file name.

Hi Tim

I haven't had any issues with that text on the published output file but you can change the filename to whatever you want before you upload.  If you want to remove the - Storyline output you can just do a right click > rename the folder that the published files are in.

Thank you for your response.  Yes, that is the issue and I know you can change the folder where the output goes but there must be a way to publish where I don't have to rename it every time. 

Thanks for the response.  Doing web output, so, for example, when I publish to a folder called "BusinessOverview" it produces a folder called "BusinessOverview Storyline - Output"

The problem is the spaces make it an invalid web address. 

On the other hand I guess I could just drag and drop the whole file structure through Windows Explorer instead but I am trying to understand the bigger picture, just started working with the software. 

Instead of using the publish option.

In reading on this apparently it is recommended to publish first to a local drive and then copy out to the web server so I will try that option tomorrow.  Thanks

Hi Tim

sorry didn't mention that 'assumed you were publishing locally' and then uploading.  You will still get the - Storyline output in the filename.  I don't think there is a way pre-publish to change this...let me know if there is

Ah, now I understand. I initially thought it was a .txt file with that name. The output "folder" name does indeed add " - Storyline output" to the name of the .story filename or the title of the project at output.

Every process is different depending on your environment. My process is to publish to the default 'My Articulate Projects' folder as the destination. Then do one of two things (web only):

Manual FTP

1. Create a directory location on the web server
2. Go to the Storyline project output folder
3. Select the contents of the output folder and FTP to the newly created directory.

Auto FTP

1. After publishing, the "Publish Successful" popup window shows several options: 
   • Email
   • FTP
   • ZIP
   • OPEN (the output folder in Windows Explorer)
   • HTML5 (launch a local preview of the project in the default web browser)
2. From here, click the "FTP" button and another popup window appears
3. Enter your web server's name, port, username, password, and directory
   • If you know the directory, type it here. You can create a new directory here as well.
4. Send - only the contents of the output folder will be sent to the server directory and *not* the upper output folder's directory name (local directory) 

Screenshots of the Auto FTP steps

All that said, I don't know if there's a way to change the name of the output folder. If so, it's buried in the system files of Storyline. I'm a geek, but that geeky!

Hope this sheds some light for you Tim.

Great thanks for the feedback I will post what I find out tomorrow.

Great feedback everyone, yes, I just published locally and then dragged and dropped all the folders underneath the one renamed Storyline - output to the web server using Windows Explorer and it works fine.  I just have been used to publishing directly to a webserver in the past.  No LMS set up yet will cross that bridge when I come to it.

Glad to hear it's working out for you Tim. 

When you have the time, setting up the web server's FTB address in Storyline will save you even more time. It really is nice to publish and upload directly from Storyline.

Interesting epilog on this my organization does not run FTP servers because it is not a secure protocol so looks like I will have to publish locally and then copy over with Windows Explorer.

Ah, well there is that. Publishing locally and then manually pushing is not all that bad. Just settling into a process that over time will become part of the rhythm of a project.

My previous org was similar until we made the case we were still inside our org's network publishing to an intranet on an internal server. IT set us up with a "super secret FTP client and backdoor port" to upload content. With extreme restrictions of course.

I'd like to do that now, but each client is different with different servers/LMSs including some with AO. One day it's publishing directly to AO, the next it's signing into an LMS as an admin and uploading a SCORM package, then FTP from Storyline to my server for client review, while other days is local publish and manual push to a web server.

This also really irritates me. I don't understand why a software company insists on forcing me to use folder names with their software name/branding in it. This is not standard practice and I have never seen this in any other software product. I paid for this software and it should be left up to me how I want to name folders on my hard drive.

Articulate please remove this in your next update! THANKS!

Hi Gary -  You are welcome to share your thoughts with our product development team here.

I find the automatic naming convention useful. Folder "Project Name" contains project assets, including the published output folder "Project Name - Storyline output". Without the suffix the project name folder and output folder would be the same.