How does Storyline behave when dealing with LMS Timeouts?

May 03, 2013

I’m trying to gain a better understanding on Storyline behaves when the underlying connection between the LMS and the launched Storyline window has been interrupted. Since we started developing in Storyline (Flash output only), I have received intermittent reports where not all of the course content is displayed to the user. This failure is typically limited to the supporting elements (e.g. graphics, interactive assets, Flash files, etc.). All of the text seems to load with no issues. If our users exit and re-launch the course the problem usually self-corrects.

When Storyline loses its connection to the LMS, does it continue to provide the illusion that the connection is still active by pulling the course structure/content from the cached course XML file?

I know that in there is a Boolean flag in the Configuration.js file that will warn the users when the connection has been lost, but before I start testing it, I wanted to hear what everyone has experienced in similar situations.

Thank you.

6 Replies
Stephen Cone

Hi Michael,

On our initial test, we had to exit out of the course before we received the very useful, "The method CommitData failed sending data to LMS. Retry?" error message. I modified the lms.js file to make error message a bit more user-friendly.

Unfortunately, my users are still reporting problems that are related to not all the assets have downloaded properly.  I haven't heard of any users encountering the modified error message yet.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Sandhya,

I'm not sure that Michael or Stephen are still subscribed to this thread, but I'd suggest begin by testing it within SCORM Cloud to see if the message appears there. Additionally, not knowing your LMS that method is specific to losing the network or internet connection - and I'm not certain it would be sent if your LMS close out the course after a period of inactivity. 

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