Presenter '13 Output Folder Name

Hi Mary,

That information is automatically created when you publish your Presenter files to LMS, if you choose to zip the files from within the published window, it will just zip the files under the course title and not include the  "-Presenter Output" language. 

Thanks for the reply Ashley, but to confirm there is no way to get rid of the "- Presenter Output" that was added with the '13 version of the software? Zipping won't help us as we don't upload our files - our LMS points directly to our files on our network. For example, the current folder location, which is indicated in our LMS, is /courses/testcourse/published/index_lms.html. So now it looks like if we republish a course originally created in '09, we would have to go out to our LMS and manually switch the folder location to /courses/testcourse/published - Presenter Output/index_lms.html. We were hoping to get rid of the manual process and just have the published folder be named the same as it was in '09.

Thanks,

Mary

Hi Mary,

I haven't tested renaming the file, and I only really test files by zipping them and then uploading to a web server or to a site such as SCORM Cloud where they'd need to be zipped. I'm not sure if anyone else in the community has tried, but I hope that they'll share their experience here. 

Hi Mary! If you publish locally and then copy just the contents of the output folder (not the folder itself) over to your existing network/server location that should replace your existing content without requiring you to update the location in the LMS.

( You could also rename the new published folder to make it match the old one and  get the same result.)

If there is any reason to keep a copy of the old course, i.e. for auditing etc you might consider making a backup copy of the original first. 

Thanks Mike!  

Thanks. We just always published right to our network drive (I know, not the best practice but it worked) and then didn't have to do any moving or copying. We'll just have to get in the habit of publishing locally ... which is recommended anyway ... and copying the contents to our network drive. 

Thanks again,

Mary

Dear all,

Just upgraded to '13 version as well.

The new folder naming is unlucky out of several reasons:

1. Publishing over old content produces duplicates, which, in many cases, you do not see immediately, because there are two folders, the old and the new one. So you have to first recognize that the publish did not replace the old one, then erase the old one, then rename the new one.

2. Folder names getting too long: Our sync solution will stop working due to the add on of the "-Presenter Output" name. Error is: "Folder name too long", which has to do that with the add-on name the path name gets too long.

Could there be a setting to get rid of the "-Presenter Output"?

Manu

I second

I agree, or at least offer an option to let the user decide how that suffix should look like.

Being in control of your own folder structure and naming is important.

Articulate decides for me how my output folder should be named by adding a suffix over which I have no control. This suffix also happens to have spaces, something we agreed to avoid in the environment I'm working in.

The solution of first publishing locally and then copying to the network might indeed solve that issue towards your LMS, but even local you can work in 'subversioned' folders and then renaming only becomes that bit more complicated again.

I think however that the problem reaches a bit further, as I don't think the output folder name and title should be one and the same entity, in your folder name you can have a different syntax than the one you want in your display title of the presentation.
Something which was already recognized in your Storyline product as an issue and has been solved:
http://www.articulate.com/support/storyline/name-of-published-folder-does-not-match-published-title

Hi Tristan and welcome to Heroes,

Thanks for sharing that here - and you're welcome to share your thoughts with our product development team. In regards to the issue you shared, I don't believe that was in reference to adding "output" to the end of the published folder file name. You'll see if you're publishing Storyline now, the word output is still added to the folder name. 

Tristan is totally correct. This new "feature" creates a pain point and is not useful in any way.

Everytime I publish now, I have to go back to my local files and rename the folder to keep with our naming conventions. At the LEAST, give us the option to not have a suffix appended to the folder name.

This functionality just gets in the way by adding another step to the process rather than streamlining the workflow.

Hi GK,

In addition to posting here it's helpful to share your thoughts in the form of a feature request here as those go to our product development team for review. 

Thanks, Ashley. APpreciate you posting a link. I went ahead and submitted the feature request. Have a happy holiday & new years!

I hope you have a happy holiday and new year as well! 

I want to also comment on this. The only way to seem to affect the output folder name is to change the TITLE. So then if you want a folder with the word LOCKED and one with UNLOCKED you end up getting those titles displayed when running the course. There should be a separate field for the title that is displayer to the user version what naming convention you want internally. Am I missing something here?

Hi Deb,

There is not a separate field for an internal file name vs. the outputs title. I know some folks have shared that they change the name of the published output folder after publishing, but as with any modifications to the published output it's something we always advise to do with caution.