Diable resume from where you left off in Storyline

Dec 10, 2012

I'm using Storyline to publish a few short learning modules. If or when the learner decides to launch the module again, I don't want the course to start from where it left off. Rather, I want it to start at the beginning slide. Yet I can't seem to find where that function is in Storyline.

I have reset all the slides to "reset to initial state" when revisiting but that doesn't seem to solve the problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Steve

14 Replies
Jesse Spinella

On the Home tab you should see the Player, Preview, Publish area, choose: Player>Other>Resume drop box>Never Resume.

It'll also give you the options to Prompt to Resume, which its set on by default and Always resume where it won't give the option at all; it'll just resume automatically. You'll want the "Never Resume" option.

Victor Madison

I want to use the "Prompt to Resume" feature so that the user can stop at any point in the presentation and then come back to resume the training.  However, the module will be used by more than one person, therefore, when a NEW user starts the training, they see the resume message.  Although the new user can just select "NO",  I would like to be able to reset the feature when the first user completes the course.

Is there a way to reset the "Prompt to Resume" feature so that it does not appear when a second trainee starts the course?

Vic

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Vic,

I assume you have users utilizing a shared computer? 

Do they have unique logins to the machine? If so, the data should be tied to the user profile, but if it's a shared profile as well, there is no way to tell the difference due to that cookie that is saved.

Curious to see how others have worked around this requirement.

Victor Madison

Leslie, I am publishing in the "CD" mode.  The client is installing the modules in a folder on a Windows-based PC.  Users will just use a shortcut to the "exe" file to access the training.  I assume that since the published version is a "Flash" application, the computer will use Flash Cookies to store the information for the resume function.  Therefore, if the client cleared the browser cookies after each user completed the training module, the resume feature would be reset - am I correct?.

Victor Madison

I just tested this (clear browser cookies) and it worked as expected - the course was restarted at the beginning with no resume prompt! Ok, now I would like to take that a step further and only delete the cookie created by the storyline module. Anyone have a suggestion as to how I can do that? Where do I find the individual browser cookies on a Windows 10 computer using the "Edge" browser.

NOTE: Just learned that Microsoft Edge does not provide a method to view cookies - you can only delete ALL of them or disable them.  Baah Humbug!  That killed the idea of just deleting the Storyline cookies.

Victor Madison

Being the "never give up" type that I am, I searched and found the exact location of the Flash Cookie file associated with the Storyline training module.  I can go in and delete the file and reset the resume feature.  However, it's location and naming convention renders it VERY un-user friendly and beyond the search capabilities of the typical end user.  It is a ".sol" file in a long chain of directories in the "USERS" folder on the computer.  Here is a typical location:

C:/USERS/NAME/AppData/Roaming/Macromedia/FlashPlayer/#SharedObjects/3G39PYQN/local host/CBT/CourseFolder/Lesson/story.swf/5W0fkHLZ2bM.sol

As you can see, this is not useful in an effort to "programmatically" reset the resume feature in storyline.

Scott L

I was looking into a virtually identical issue recently. Storyline records data in two different technologies depending on if you are viewing the Flash version or the HTML5 version. As Vic found, in the Flash version, it uses a “Flash cookie” (technically called a Shared Object). For the HTML5 versions, it uses what’s called the HTML5 Web Storage API, specifically a property called localStorage. Both of these hold lots more data than the traditional browser cookie.

As Vic also found, the names of these persistent storage objects has a rather funky name which is 11 characters of randomly-generated letters/numbers. These get stored in the user profile of the computer and are used for, among other things, this resume data. I “think” the Flash version might resume regardless of which browser you use, but the HTML5 version is browser-specific.

The name of this storage object is a key (the 11 characters) that is randomly generated (renamed) each time you (re)publish your Storyline file.

For those interested, to find this key look in the output folder of an HTML5 course. Go to the “Your Course - Storyline output\html5\data\js\” folder and find the “data.js” file. Open the file in a text or code editor and search for the resume ID key name by searching for: "resume":{"id". An example of this is: "resume":{"id":"6ekVBZ8pAs5".

There’s probably little point in getting into these weeds, though; it’s only useful is rare scenarios of trying to manage SL data from other means or software.

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