Articulate 2 - AICC - IE11 - Too much Communication with LMS
Dec 24, 2015
About 2 months ago, I selected row counts from our audit enrollment and audit tracking tables for a particular course. For some learners, the audit row counts were close to 100,000 rows. Every time the course content communicates with the LMS a new audit row gets created. I never would have found this if I had not done this SQL as it does not cause an issue, except for way too many audit rows being inserted into 3 of our audit tables. That and way too much communication between the course content and our LMS.
Our LMS is PeopleSoft 9.2
Last week, some of our testers were able to take an AICC course content created with Storyline 2. For the testers using IE8, they only had a few audit rows created for the communication between the course content and the LMS. For the one tester using IE11, he had thousands of audit rows that were created for the communication between the course content and the LMS. So, it looks like this issue is isolated to IE11 users. From the time stamps on the audit rows, it looks like about 80 rows are being inserted into our 3 audit tables every second. WOW!!!
I have not yet created a debug file, yet. But, I am thinking this is somehow related to the FORCED_COMMIT_TIME setting in the Configuration.js file when using IE11. This is the line from the configuration.js file.
var FORCED_COMMIT_TIME = "0"; //Used to force CommitData back to the LMS at the desired interval (in milliseconds). Set to 0 (zero) to not force a commit time.
Ours is set to zero, so there should be no forced commit and that is the way it works using IE8. With a value of 60000, the forced commit happens every 10 minutes. If the FORCED_COMMIT_TIME is not actually zero but instead a fractional amount between 1 and zero, would that cause the course content to communicate with our LMS 80 times every second? And, it seems to only be happening for learners using IE11.
13 Replies
Hi James,
Have you also reached out to Peoplesoft in regards to this issue? It may be something you may want to look at testing in SCORM Cloud as well and as you mentioned pull the debug log to see what's being sent back and forth - as the items you mentioned in regards to audit rows and enrollment sound outside my purview.
I have reached out to Oracle/PeopleSoft over the last couple days. Our audit tables are populated by Oracle database triggers from 2 tracking tables each containing 1 row that are changed by the LMS. The whole issue is that our audit tables are having large amounts of rows created when an employee is taking the course using Internet Explorer 11. So, the LMS is making a lot of changes to these tracking data tables.
Our company has been upgrading from IE 8 to IE11. However, I have recently heard reports of some employees who use IE9 and IE10 are also having lots of audit rows being created.
Today in our Stage Environment, I had an admin create a new test Articulate Storyline 2 AICC with Debug Mode turned on. She enrolled both of us in the course.
She is using Internet Explorer 8 and I am using Internet Explorer 11.
She sent me her 60 page word document debug file after completing the course.
I launched the course and only answered 4 questions. I ended up with a 659 page word document debug file. Don't know how big the file would have been if I had actually completed the course like she did.
I am thinking all the changes the LMS is making to our tracking data are coming from the course content when the employee launches it with Internet Explorer > 8. I can send you the 2 debug files.
Thanks, James
Hi James,
Have you also looked at testing this in SCORM Cloud, as it's the industry standard for testing LMS output? This will confirm if there is an issue with the course communicating through a particular browser or how that browser and your LMS communicate. You can review this article which walks through how to test at SCORM Cloud and how to enable the Storyline debug mode.
I had someone using IE11 launch the course through SCORM Cloud. She was able to successfully complete the course with no issues mentioned. So, that doesn't help.
I had her launch the course in our Stage environment. After answering the 1st question, she left her browser idle on the 2nd question for about 1 minute. While she was doing nothing in her browser window, I repeatedly ran this SQL on our PeopleSoft Oracle database:
SELECT LM_TOTAL_TIME, LM_SES_TIME FROM THE PS_LM_TRACK_STUDNT;
These LM_TOTAL_TIME and LM_SES_TIME field values just kept on increasing with each run of the SQL. This action is what is causing us to have so much audit rows. These record-field values are being updated from the course tracking data (cmi.core.total_time and cmi.core.session_time) that is being sent to our LMS.
So, why is our LMS receiving so much tracking data from the course content being launched under IE11 and not when launched under IE8?
Hi James,
Were you able to compare the LMS debug data from your SCORM Cloud attempt in IE11 vs. your LMS in IE11? That may help you pinpoint the data and how it's being tracked - if you need our assistance taking a look we're happy to. You'll want to send the debug logs as described in the previously shared link and pass them along to our Support engineers here to take a look.
Compare, not yet.
However, I had someone take the course in SCORM Cloud this morning with debug turned on. On the 4the question the window froze up on her. After closing that course window, SCORM Test Track Sandbox showed Completion with Failure, Score 25.00% and Total Time of 3m 47s.
She copied and pasted the debug file lines to a word document. With 19,455 lines; the debug file has 828 pages. I will have this person (Bonnie Grover) open a support case and have her attach the necessary files. Thanks
Thanks for the update James! Looks like we did receive the case (00730559) and you should be hearing from someone on our support team. Thank you for mentioning the name difference, as it makes it much easier to follow along.
Hi James!
Just wanted to be sure that Bonnie is getting the e-mails from our team. The e-mails would come from support@articulate.com and if you are not seeing the e-mail from 1/25 be sure to check your spam/junk folder. If you need us to re-send, just let me know.
Final Update. Adding scorm.com to Internet Explorer 11 Compatibility View Settings resolved this excess communication issue with SCORM Cloud. Adding our internet server to my Internet Explorer 11 Compatibility View Settings resolved this issue with our LMS.
For the few employees in our company who did not go from IE8 to IE11, we did have a few reports of this same issue reported for Internet Explorer 9 and 10 plus Microsoft Edge.
Thanks for all your help, James
Awesome! Thanks for popping in and sharing your update with the community. Much appreciated.
Our company has 274,674 active employee and contractors who take courses on our Learning Management System (ELM - PeopleSoft 9.2). The system/network administrators are against using compatibility view company-wide for our LMS. There thought is that It works for our LMS server system but it could break other applications.
Is there any work being done by Articulate to resolve this issue where using Compatibility View is not the solution?
Hi James,
I took a look at your original case and this thread - and it does not seem to be a change that would occur within Storyline, as it's set to publish for SCORM Compliance, but an issue of security settings within the browser and LMS.
If you're continuing to have difficulty, we can reopen your case with Victor and see if there is something else our team can investigate further.
Seems to me that this difference is somehow due to the HTML5 version of the course that plays on IE11 versus the flash version that will run when compatibility mode is turned on. The lessons work extremely differently in Flash vs. HTML5. The HTML5 implementation is a nightmare across the board. You might want to test the course on other browsers with and without the flash plugin to see if there are similar results. Focusing just on IE might be misleading.
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