Solved: Pending Course Update Notifications

I have added a mechanism into my courses that prompts learners if a course is about to be updated. This allows anyone who started the course to finish it, while simultaneously discouraging new learners from starting it—giving us a window to manually push course updates as needed.

Updating courses while learners are taking them is bad, so to pull this off, I need a way for the course to check an external condition that I can tweak if changes to a course need to be made.

This method uses a text file that is saved to the server in the same location as the course itself if an update is needed. If the file exists, then a "it might be a bad idea to take this now" pop-up layer is displayed on the title screen. This layer relies on an IsUpdating variable within Storyline, which is set to true if the isUpdating.txt file exists.

Here's the JavaScript that gets executed when the timeline begins on the title slide:

$.ajax({
 type: 'HEAD',
 url: 'http://lmsdomainhere/courselocation/isUpdating.txt',
 complete: function (xhr){
 // If the file status is 404, it doesn't exist. If it's 200, it exists.
 if (xhr.status == 200){
   var player = GetPlayer();
   player.SetVar("IsUpdating", true);
 }
 }
});

Note: The isUpdating.txt file doesn't need to say anything, but including some instructions on how this works might be a good idea. 

Maybe this helps some folks who are looking for a way to update courses on the fly without interrupting learners (too much).

Cheers,

Kel