Learning More About Your LMS: Resume Behavior and Suspend Data

Justin Grenier
By Justin Grenier

Course communicating with LMS

Have you ever run into a situation where your course doesn’t pick up where you left off when you view it more than once on your LMS? Or maybe it does, but you’d prefer it start over from the beginning? The way your course responds when it’s relaunched is called the resume behavior. 

If your course isn’t resuming as desired, you’re probably wondering what’s going on and how to fix it. In this article, we’ll help you figure that out.

How Do I Control the Resume Behavior?  

First, let’s examine our options. If you’re using Storyline 360, Presenter 360, Quizmaker 360, or Engage 360, you can choose from three resume options:

Prompt to resume

If learners previously viewed part of the course, this option displays a prompt, asking learners if they want to pick up where they left off.

Always resume

This forces your course to open at the place where learners left off. They won’t see a prompt; it just happens automatically.

Never resume

This forces your course to always open at the beginning, even if learners completed part of the course previously. They won’t see a prompt.

 

If you’re using  Rise 360, the course will always resume from where the learner left off. 

How Does Resume Actually Work?

As a learner makes his way through a course, a compressed chunk of information—called suspend data—is sent to the LMS after each slide. This suspend data describes everything about the current state of the course, including the learner’s responses, navigation history, object states, variable values, interaction results, and more.

Course communicating information to LMS

When the learner opens the course again, it asks the LMS where they previously left off. The LMS sends the suspend data back to the course, and the course uses it to resume at the same point and in the same state as before.

LMS communicating back to course

Why Do Courses Fail to Resume?

A few things could get in the way of the resume communication process:

You exceeded the suspend data limit.

Your LMS might be imposing limits on suspend data. Older LMS specs, such as SCORM 1.2, have outdated restrictions on suspend data.

We recommend publishing for the latest edition of SCORM 2004, xAPI (Tin Can API), or cmi5. See these articles for more information:

You’re in a cross-domain environment.

If you’re hosting AICC content on a different server than your LMS, you may experience a cross-domain conflict. See this article for solutions. (Note that this doesn’t apply to Rise 360 courses.)

You already completed the course.

The resume feature might not work as you’d expect after you meet the completion requirement. Most LMSs consider a course to be in review mode after the tracking requirement has been met.

In review mode, resume data is no longer sent to the LMS, which prevents learners from accidentally changing their course status from Complete back to Incomplete. See this article for more information. (Note that this doesn’t apply to Rise 360 courses.)

Can I Examine Suspend Data?

Enable LMS debug mode to watch your suspend data flow back and forth between your content and your LMS. By doing so, you can verify that the data returned by your LMS upon resume is the same data that your content sent upon suspend—a common point of failure.

Course and LMS communicating back and forth

To help you avoid exceeding suspend data limits (see above), we compress suspend data. As a result, the suspend_data string in an LMS debug log isn’t human-readable. You won’t be able to decipher what it means, but you can see if the data sent to the LMS matches the data that comes back from the LMS.

Doesn’t My LMS Need to Read Suspend Data?

No. Only the course itself needs to be able to decompress and read suspend data. The LMS just functions as a handy place to store suspend data between attempts.

The Bottom Line

Now that you have a better understanding of how resume behavior works, you should be able to troubleshoot these issues more easily if you run into them.

Need more help troubleshooting? Check out these other resources:

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60 Comments
Justin Grenier
over 8 years ago08/13/15 at 2:06 am (UTC)
That's interesting to hear, Blair. If you were to enable LMS Debug Mode, I'd be interested to see what is different about the suspend data that is being sent and received in those two scenarios. For example, does the course send different suspend data when the window is closed versus using the Exit button? Does the LMS return different suspend data depending on how the learner exits? This could help you pin down the source of the problem. https://community.articulate.com/articles/the-secret-to-lms-debugging
Deborah Munitz
over 8 years ago08/21/15 at 3:12 pm (UTC)
I want to just continue to post the opinion that I have which I believe others share that Articulate should share the compression/decompression algorithm or provide a code snippet that would allow the data to be inspected by test teams or administrators. In Studio 9 I have seen so very many instances of browser not properly sending suspend data or sending corrupted data or sending up strange characters strings when there is security software blocking the flow. The inability to examine this data for troubleshooting purposes is extremely troubling. It's the old 80:20 rule and in this more like 95:5. Most of the time everything will work fine, but in the rare instance where it doesn't, this new situation makes it impossible to deal with.
Deborah Munitz
over 8 years ago08/21/15 at 3:27 pm (UTC)

Just to add a meaningful example to this. There is a bug in Google Chrome with the launching of videos. If you use more than a single parameter it can cause videos to be launched in a new tab instead of new window. For a user it seems like their lesson just disappears when the main window launches in front of their lesson in a new tab. If they don't navigate back to the hidden window and they just relaunch the lesson it resumes on screen 1 instead of where they left off. A customer service rep can clearly see that this is the situation in the Studio 9 implementation because you see that they got to screen X even when the last screen unlocked = 1. And while I have never figured out the blue moon situation where I get a user that get 3 pairs of unrecognizable characters scattered in the qui... Expand

James Jordan
over 8 years ago11/09/15 at 2:34 pm (UTC)
I agree with Deborah. This seems like a very basic troubleshooting tool that should be included with the product. Especially since it was available in Articulate Studio. As the person who troubleshoots these issues for 175,000+ associates it's very frustrating when you can't see what is happening behind the scenes. I would rather have this "feature" available and deal with the suspend_data limit proactively.
Deborah Munitz
over 8 years ago12/26/15 at 3:17 pm (UTC)
I don't have a problem with them compressing the data. I have a problem in their not releasing a tool to be able to look at the data. If they want to keep the routines close to their vest them they could simply publish a tool on their website like google translate. You paste something on the left and push a button to get uncompressed data on the right. If you edit what's on the right you should be able to click a button to translate it back to the left. Not supplying anything is the ultimate frustration.
Justin Grenier
over 8 years ago01/11/16 at 2:27 pm (UTC)

Good Morning, Stephan. The decision to compress Suspend Data is less about protecting proprietary information and more about making sure we don't exceed the data limits that some Learning Management Systems impose. Further still, we can't offer a web-based suspend data decoding tool right now since our compression/decompression routine is dependent on XML data that is unique to every project. It is not possible to decode the suspend data without first parsing the XML and then creating the correct object structure to read it. Again, we're not trying to hide anything. It's just that this model honestly isn't achievable at the moment. If you have a set of LMS Debug Logs that we can help you diagnose, please feel free to send them over and we'll be happy to take a look: https://... Expand

Steve Flowers
over 8 years ago01/11/16 at 3:17 pm (UTC)

Hey Justin - This is a sore subject with a few of us LMS admins that double as developers:) It's less about troubleshooting and more about confirmation of progress when someone says "I finished it." The typical flow is trust but verify and with the encrypted setup, the verify step is nearly impossible. I've taken to completing a course (I have to do this anyway as an employee) to get an estimate of the suspend data volume, then comparing this with a learner's completion. Additionally, in SCORM 1.2 when suspend data overflows the limit, Storyline restores behave in a consistently bad way. I get that the restriction is based on the mechanics of how it's being saved. However, it's been pointed out in this thread that despite the compression, there are efficiencies that could b... Expand

Deborah Munitz
over 8 years ago01/11/16 at 4:10 pm (UTC)

Justin if what you say were true then Articulate wouldn't be so shy about publishing the method. Most people will happily ignore the documentation but for those of us that want it (or feel we NEED it) we can have our developers go ahead and develop what we choose. If the routine is dependent on the XML data specific to each published lesson that's not the end of the world since we have access to that xml. Just publish the darned compression/decompression schema and let us do that which we want to do. Leaving the community guessing is problematic. You have people posting that they have figured things out or tell you to call this developer or that (who think they have solutions that will only cost $5K or what not). I have had an unmitgated disaster going to Studio '13. I have had to crea... Expand

Justin Grenier
over 8 years ago01/12/16 at 1:09 am (UTC)

Hi, Deborah. I understand what you're asking for, and I'm sorry to say that I can't provide an ETA for such a tool at this time. I discussed this directly with engineering and we simply can't divert the resources needed to document (and maintain documentation on) this very complex algorithm. It is on the radar with the necessary people, but unfortunately there won't be anything more that I can say on this matter for the time being. ​ I suggest we shift the focus to the root of why your Learning Management System is so susceptible to losing learner progress in the first place. Based on the behavior that you've described both here and in your private Support Case with us, I expect that the data being returned by your LMS upon resume is different from the data that your content sent to... Expand

Deborah Munitz
over 8 years ago01/12/16 at 5:00 am (UTC)

Justin that pretty darned assumptive of you. Our LMS isnt losing data. It takes what it gets and it stores it. I have logs and logs to prove it. We encounter problems on the client side all the time and I have very little faith that Articulate will figure it out for me. I am trying to figure out ways to deal with the vagaries of different platforms. If a user a user opens a lesson one computer and gets 99 screens in and then opens on another computer (or tablet) or whatever and that device trashes the data our LMS will send them a big suspend data strings and they will ExitAu and send nothing. I have seen it happen. Thankfully it doesn't happen a lot. The new '13 release is so much more susceptible to problems. And it give so much less feedback than it used to. And god forbid you try t... Expand

Deborah Munitz
8 years ago04/01/16 at 2:04 pm (UTC)

Justin I would like to submit a request for a new feature. To be able to do this correctly would require better knowledge of what's going on with the XML data that is unique. I am thinking that since the structure of the folders in a published presentation is known, and the files with the XML compression data are known, then a routine could be included in the published output that could be called that would "know" where the lesson specific xml is located. We need two simple JavaScript functions – one will decode Articulate’s encoded data into human-readable form. The other function does the opposite. Our site supports Prototype – but we could support jQuery as well – and the best would be no JS library. We had already assumed the JS code is already in one of the .JS files that Articul... Expand

Stephan Sinka
over 8 years ago01/11/16 at 2:52 pm (UTC)
Justin Thank-you for finally giving an answer that is precise and meaningful rather than the pat answers from smiling faces that simply restate adnosium that "it's not human readable" while not really understand the question (let alone the answer). This forum has been a huge help because of all your replies!! Again Much thanks for concise and accurate information. Very redemptive. Cheers S
Justin Grenier
almost 8 years ago05/09/16 at 12:57 pm (UTC)
Good Morning Pankaj, and welcome to E-Learning Heroes! Articulate Storyline compresses suspend data to avoid exceeding data limits imposed by some learning management systems. As a result, the suspend_data string in an LMS debug log isn't human-readable. That is, you won't be able to decipher it. If you need a hand interpreting your LMS Debug Logs, please feel free to send them to us for a closer look: http://articulatecase.com Good luck with your project!
Sara G.
almost 7 years ago05/05/17 at 7:57 pm (UTC)
Do you know whether it's possible that only some users, not all, would be affected by this Suspend Data issue? We have a course with a lot of slides (108 text and images, some interactivity, no audio), all slides are Reset to Initial State, and the course is set to prompt to resume upon return. Some users' records are showing status as Incomplete even though they have completed the course several times. The course is set to record completion by number of slides viewed (all 108 of them). We are publishing to SCORM 1.2.
Deborah Munitz
almost 7 years ago05/05/17 at 9:36 pm (UTC)
Sara, 1) turn off prompt to resume upon return. If you have a student accidentally hit the wrong button then you are SOL and since you can't see their data you can't independently confirm how far they got. I turned off this feature and that helps. (A lot.) 2) I encountered a problem recently with a new release of flash that was wiping out data but I think its was fixed since the problem stopped occurring after Flash came out with a new release. 3) Turn off HTML 5. The implementation on AICC for sure is atrocious. If a student opens on an ipad/iphone or even some android devices and you have html 5 turned on, it will wipe data. So will firefox if flash is not installed. And there are other issues too. Just turn it off. Good luck.
Justin Grenier
almost 7 years ago06/21/17 at 3:37 pm (UTC)
Hi, Christian. Storyline compresses the suspend-data and sends it to the LMS after each slide. If a learner suspends and resumes the course, Storyline asks the LMS where the learner previously left off. The LMS sends the suspend data back to the course, and the course decompresses it and resumes back to the same point. So yes, Storyline is able to compress and decompress the suspend-data. ...but doing so within the context of what is sent to the LMS would double or triple the data we send, quickly overwhelming the suspend data limits imposed by some LMSes.
Jack Waller
over 6 years ago01/11/18 at 4:10 pm (UTC)
Hi Justin, I work for a company that is using a custom built system to host our articulate courses as well as our other learning tools. We have an SQL database that stores the learner variables, but we would like to make use of the Suspend Data. As ours isn't an off the shelf LMS, will our development team still be able to capture the Suspend Data that gets fired on every slide, so we can resume a user where they left off if they log out?
Justin Grenier
over 6 years ago01/11/18 at 4:23 pm (UTC)
Your development team may be able to do that, Jack. They'll just need to author a system to accept and return Suspend Data according to the specifications of AICC, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, or xAPI: - https://github.com/ADL-AICC/AICC-Document-Archive/ - https://adlnet.gov/adl-research/scorm/scorm-1-2/ - https://adlnet.gov/adl-research/scorm/scorm-2004-4th-edition/ - https://experienceapi.com/docs-downloads/
Jack Waller
over 6 years ago01/11/18 at 8:30 pm (UTC)
Hi Justin, Thanks for getting back to me. I'll ask our team to look at the sites you recommended. Is there a specific location in the Storyline output where the Suspend Data has to be gathered from? For the SCORM 2004 output we have it looks like it would get called from the SCORM2004Functions.js file in the lms folder. Under the function: function SCORM2004_GetDataChunk(){ WriteToDebug("In SCORM2004_GetDataChunk"); SCORM2004_ClearErrorInfo(); return SCORM2004_CallGetValue("cmi.suspend_data"); Thanks again!
Justin Grenier
over 6 years ago01/11/18 at 9:07 pm (UTC)
Hey, Andrew. The great thing about adhering to an LMS standard is that no custom development is needed. Articulate complies with AICC, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, and xAPI, so your team would just select the LMS standard of your choice and then use the above resources to comply with that standard. Alternatively, you can also buy a driver or contract with a company that specializes in this sort of thing. We recommend https://scorm.com/.
Robert Edgar
over 6 years ago12/05/17 at 8:35 pm (UTC)
Hi all. An important point: when a course is launched, the LMS creates a "satellite LMS" in the browser. The suspend data is transferred from Storyline to that satellite LMS. It is not saved to the Server until the server asks for it. This is important. If you wish, you can use a javascript commit() statement to force it to save, but only if something has been revised on a slide. I have a full description of how to do this in a comment I uploaded 2-3 years ago. If someone is having completion problems with their LMS, I suggest you find and read my article. Best of luck.
Robert Edgar
6 years ago03/22/18 at 3:17 pm (UTC)

Hi Christine, Here is a link to a string in a Storyline thread where I explained my approach, and included a .pdf of my procedures. Note, though, that while I was able to pop up a warning dialog in SL2, that capability did not persist in Storyline 360. However, I've confirmed that the suspend data call was successful; it does save the current suspend data string to the server LMS. https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/manually-invoke-lmscommit-on-slide-load-with-js?page=2 Good luck! Robert Manually invoke LMSCommit() on slide load with JS ... community.articulate.com Hi, I'd like to add "save points" to various slides within my course to ensure that learner progress is preserved as best as possible (e.g. guarding against a lost ... Robert Edgar Program Ma... Expand

Mark Tomlinson
almost 6 years ago06/04/18 at 2:03 pm (UTC)
I don't know why you are using suspend data for bookmarking at all. Despite this 'compression' I frequently come across the 4K limit in SCORM 1.2. These are not particularly long courses either. Reducing a course size or using SCORM 2004 are not always practical. Why don't you use cmi.comments for the bookmarking and cmi.suspend_data for everything else? That would at least mean that peoples bookmarks don't overflow.
Robert Edgar
almost 6 years ago06/04/18 at 2:50 pm (UTC)
HI Mark, With Storyline and our LMS, we don't seem to have a 4k limit, even with SCORM 1.2. I am sure that other LMSs do, but we've done a lot of testing, and our LMS (Oracle ELM 9.1 and 9.2) doesn't break with longer suspend_data strings. However, can you provide an example of a cmi.comments call? I'm not sure I get how that would bookmark without creating a longer suspend_data string, but I'm certainly interested! Thanks Robert
Mark Tomlinson
almost 6 years ago06/04/18 at 2:56 pm (UTC)
Your LMS doesn;t conform to the SCORM 1.2 standard then, which in this case is a happy situation for you. 4K is the limit. A lot do conform to that limit. cmi.comments is another read write data field available to the courseware. The official definition is: cmi.comments (CMIString (SPM: 4096), RW) Textual input from the learner about the SCO Note it's read / write and is another 4K so basically 'doubles up' on the suspend_data field. It's not something you could implement yourself (well you could with Javascript calls, but there would be no point as the suspend_data is still going to be used to store bookmarks currently as that is what Articulate decided). It is something that Articulate would have to implement in the back end.
Steve Flowers
almost 6 years ago06/04/18 at 4:42 pm (UTC)
4K in the spec is a floor (minimum), not a ceiling(maximum) :) An LMS that doesn't limit suspend data string length isn't necessarily non-conformant. I'm in agreement about using bookmarks for the bookmarking string. Suspend data truncation is something we contended with frequently when we published to SCORM 1.2. OR, at the very least, moving the restore location to the front of the string so it's never chopped off. We've been using SCORM 2004 for awhile because our system supports better reporting of interactions in 2004.
Mark Tomlinson
almost 6 years ago06/05/18 at 6:46 am (UTC)
The SCORM 1.2 specification states that suspend_data is of type CMIString4096. The specification defines CMIString4096 as "A Set of ASCII characters with a maximum length of 4096 characters". Note the use of the word maximum, not minimum. In software implementation specifications, limits are always maximums so the appropriate data type can be used to ensure efficiency. The other way to look at it is that if courseware sends a string in excess of 4K characters, then the courseware is non-compliant. In that sense Storyline sending over 4K is non-conformant and the LMS that rejects it is conformant.
Cathy Frost
over 5 years ago07/27/18 at 6:03 pm (UTC)
Hi, I noticed that we were getting the suspend data limits error. When publishing from SCORM 1.2 to 2004, 3rd or 4th Edition, we started seeing a split screen of the course and a page that had the hyperlinked name of the course displayed. In some adjusting of the player, we were able to separate these two pages, however, I do not want a second page with the hyperlinked name. I only see it when publishing to 2004 and not when publishing to 1.2. Has anyone experienced this and/or know if it is resolvable? Thank you!
pradeep kumar
over 5 years ago09/07/18 at 12:10 pm (UTC)
Hi Justin, I am facing problem in LMS resuming functionality in completed state(SCORM). Scenario:- 1.If the first package was in completed state and If I uploaded the second package, the latest uploaded package is resuming from where I left in the first package(Resuming taking place). Actually I need second package should start from starting onwards. 2.Can you please share how this resuming functionality is working and where should I debug to solve this issue.
Justin Grenier
over 5 years ago11/05/18 at 4:41 pm (UTC)

Good Morning, Jane! I'm sorry to hear that. The best way to identify an LMS issue is to compare how your published output behaves in an industry-standard testing engine. SCORM Cloud is a free testing engine that supports AICC, SCORM, and Tin Can API (xAPI) content: https://cloud.scorm.com This video demonstrates how to use SCORM Cloud with Articulate content: http://articulate.fyi/1OHe39f You'll also find some helpful LMS-troubleshooting tips here: http://articulate.fyi/1TBEwac If your content works properly at SCORM Cloud but not in your LMS, please open a support case with your LMS provider. They’ll know how best to help with LMS-specific problems. If your content doesn't work in SCORM Cloud, we'll be glad to investigate it further. Just send me a copy of your project ... Expand

ITRC 1
over 5 years ago11/05/18 at 7:56 pm (UTC)
Thanks, Justin our Rise course is large 650MB zipped. so i duplicated and removed many lessons - got a pared down version to 40MB zipped. (the StormCloud free account limits uploads to 100MB). Followed the steps you provided and it worked - was able to resume. i was not taken to the exact spot i left at but it took me to the start of the lesson where i exited from which is OK for us. one more question before i head on over to our LMS devs… is the large size of our Rise course going to be a problem for Suspend Data in our LMS? i see that you listed Suspend Data size for SCORM 2004 Edition 3 at 64,000(?). How would i even know what to set this limit to? jane
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