Blog Post
Justin
Staff
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://www.articulate.com/support/contact/submit.php
Thanks for adding your voice to our community!
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://www.articulate.com/support/contact/submit.php
Thanks for adding your voice to our community!
SteveFlowers
9 years agoCommunity Member
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 be won by shifting the way questions are recorded to suspend data and shifting the progress to the front of the compressed string.
Shifting to SCORM 2004 is a decent suggestion to get the additional overhead beyond the 4K floor of 1.2. But not all LMS support this well.
Many LMS admins are used to uncompressed suspend data. Suspend data makes confirmations and "under the hood" review go very quickly. I suspect this is where a lot of the soreness is coming from. "I've been able to do X for a decade, now I can't." Yes, folks really don't like having less access:) Go figure! :P
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 be won by shifting the way questions are recorded to suspend data and shifting the progress to the front of the compressed string.
Shifting to SCORM 2004 is a decent suggestion to get the additional overhead beyond the 4K floor of 1.2. But not all LMS support this well.
Many LMS admins are used to uncompressed suspend data. Suspend data makes confirmations and "under the hood" review go very quickly. I suspect this is where a lot of the soreness is coming from. "I've been able to do X for a decade, now I can't." Yes, folks really don't like having less access:) Go figure! :P