Presenter ModulesThat Randomly Won't Advance

Jan 03, 2013

As a not for profit, we have created several dozen Presenter modules (we call them webinars) for our members in the last few years. The more we create and the more members we roll them out to, the more we are running to a growing burden of technical support on webinars that get stuck. They suddenly won't advance.

Sometimes, we can replicate the problem on our end. When that happens, we can usually solve it, often just by republishing. But the much bigger issue is when the problem occurs randomly. (Meaning two things -- one, it only happens for some viewers, and two, if those viewers restart the webinar, it's likely to fail to advance in different places.)

It often (but not always) happens in a quiz or when a quiz is supposed to advance back into the Presenter module. Almost all of our webinars do not allow a viewer to advance, so they can't solve the problem manually. If they "rewind," it inevitably fails to advance again, at the same point or another.

We believe the issue is on their end and involves some combination of their browser (and version), Flash driver and/or antivirus software. But there are so many combinations of even just these three variables (and the thousands of others) that we can't nail anything down.

As you all know, it's very hard to solve a problem you can't replicate. Our members are very frustrated, and assuring them that the problem is on their end (or proving it, by asking them to view the webinar from a home PC) doesn't solve the problem. And it is a big problem for us -- as the problem increases, if we can't find a solution, we may have to discontinue several years worth of webinar development.

I can't share any examples, since it is again random. But I'd welcome any thoughts, suggestions or advice.

One specific question. Would upgrading to Storyline be likely to solve this? 

3 Replies
Peter Anderson

Hey George!

First off, I'm really sorry to hear about the frustrations your users are experiencing. Sounds like you've put in a ton of work over the years, and I can imagine this must be a bit disheartening. We'd like to be able to help any way we can. 

If you were able to compile a list of commonalities that the affected users share, that would be a great place to start. Things like connection speed, browser, and Flash version might help us begin to understand exactly why it's only affecting a few users. Even if you were able to provide us with an example course so that we could try to replicate the behavior, we'd be happy to explore that. 

It's hard to say whether upgrading to Storyline would solve the issues your users are experiencing, but you're certainly welcome to take it for a free test drive for 30 days, import your courses into Storyline, publish, and have your users try that version. 

George Blomgren

Hello Peter,

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Trying to track the variables won't work (the people who report the problems to us are very non-technical and get frustrated quickly when we start asking questions like "what browser are you using?" But your other two suggestions are spot on. The next time we have an issue I'll share it. And we will try seeing if important and publishing from the Storyline test version solves the problem.

Cheers!

George

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