How happy are we with feature request and bug handling at Articulate?

I also agree. Not only can bug fixes take inordinate amounts of time to be resolved but there is also an almost continuous procession of newly introduced bugs that thread their way into the product with the monthly updates.  It can be a stressful experience working with Storyline!

Indeed companies i worked for...tell their employees... DO NOT update Articulate the moment you get an update announcement...as they donot test properly. We first want to test internally whether all functionality that we need is fine... we tell you all when an update is safe. And that was true in companies i worked in about 7 years ago !!!! This has not changed since.

I suspect they have only one dev that does all the work and the rest of the company are just sales people and managers.

I did think of you as I wrote this. I wondered if you might pop-up.

I'd be happy if it was cool aid. It's mostly brine.

Yes. I've made this comment myself before. Two+ years on bug resolution certainly gives the impression.

Yes, always risky to update immediately and BETA test, which can sometimes be frustrating when you see a feature update you've been waiting for.

One other pain point for us is the 32bit infrastructure that Storyline is built on. Tech advanced so much but Storyline is still working like 15 years ago.

Funny to see you popup ;-) Too bad you bailed the community, but i do understand.

Im sorry for my choice of words... indeed you didnot bail. And i agree with you. Nevertheless there is alas little competition at least in Europe for Articulate. If you ever start a company developing competitive tools to Storyline, i will join :-)

Storyline is the absolutely worst product I have ever worked with - directly followed by Rise. Bugs barely ever get fixed, much-demanded feature requests are ignored for years and there is absolutely zero transparency. 
On a side note I am always baffled how an extremely simple course preview can take so long to render, when Premiere can pre-render a video project in real-time on the same hardware. 

This happens because Storyline is an ancient app that runs on 32bit.

Ah... that would explain a lot. 

This is the kind of response from Articulate that we get and understand it to mean "it's not going to happen". This from a request for PX and % configurable corner radius on rectangles. The type we are familiar with through GD programs and CSS. I can't beleive this has to be classified as a "feature" request, and when it is finally introduce in another 5 years, they will release it with fanfare.

And this one for the bug switching between Slide and Layer templates, that has been around for as long as I can remember:

This second one is really frustrating, as I know this would have been reported several times and articulate would have been aware of it for years, but have chosen not to do anything about it. In the response, there is no update on when this bug might be fixed.

They don't care because money is coming and Lucy gets her payment every month so no need to fix something that is working.

A 64 bit Storyline build would be the way forwards. I logged that request with Articulate some time back (as many other users I spoke to about this have). 64-bit code using modern programming methods would avoid legacy issues like app crashes, corruptions to images and files and general bugginess that tends to occur after adding a significantly large amount of slides and video (even after compressing video heavily). Fellow IDs I have spoken to on these matters would rather not deal with attempts at file imports from projects with glitchiness/crashing issues, or pinpointing which slides are causing publishing problems (i.e. replacing corrupt images that cause the project to hang when hosted) moving forwards.

The use of buttons (particularly the Storyline default buttons) and states is an example of code due for an overhaul. On the Articulate forums, I see many issues regarding the quirks new users experience when using buttons - e.g. hover appearing above selected state (logged 2014).

In a Jan 2023 tip from longtime staffer on how to combine hover and selected states the Bibby cut and paste button states technique (logged 2017) is demonstrated as a workaround to override default button behaviour, along with other ideas that users tend to figure out themselves over time (such as changing the appearance of hover to make it more subtle when it appears above other states).

Tidying up the default button behaviours to be more consistent and straightforward to program  would lessen the random outcomes that new users complain about. I have several workarounds to the button issues and use whatever is required at the time, which often involves testing and editing until it works; if it simply worked consistently every time without looking for workarounds that would be an improvement. Users often create their own *.png buttons externally (in an image editing app such as Adobe Illustrator) then import, which I often do also for working around the look of default hovers without having to use extra triggers. I often do this because others may end up having to deal with these later when making future updates to my courses.

When I have logged tickets and provided files, the initial response has often felt like the representative responding is providing content from a how-to-guide rather than responding directly to the issue encountered. The improvement suggestions I have logged with Articulate result only in a vague and non-commital autoreply email in my inbox. Some fellow users I know have given up logging issues with Articulate, other than the occasional support ticket if they require assistance on workarounds that are not well documented on the forums already and have a tight deadline to meet.

Thanks for your comments on buttons Reuben. I couldn't agree more.

This is the kind of behaviour that we learn to live with (for the worse) and we are reminded frequently how ridiculous it is when explaining it to new developers or clients.

Another major bug bear of mine is that every element you add to stage has ALT text by default. Sure text boxes and jpgs, PNG's etc, but shapes drawn in Storyline and and icons imported through to stock library are sometime composed of grouped shapes where each element has a junk ALT text defined. This is extra unnecessary work as we must clear this stuff up for screen reader users.

Hi all,

First, by way of introduction, I’m Kerry Munz, CTO at Articulate. I joined Articulate in December 2022, and one of my first initiatives was a listening tour among our Engineers, Support Team, and other key internal stakeholders. A key takeaway from all those conversations was a need to bring Engineering closer to our customers. As engineers, we have a duty to know our customers and understand their challenges ourselves so that we directly experience the impact of our work and our choices.

Reading through this discussion, I hear the frustration and am saddened that you’ve lost faith in our communication, our quality, and are feeling abandoned. So, I would like the opportunity to listen and learn from you directly.

I’ll reach out to everyone who has posted in this discussion to schedule a group conversation to hear your concerns, ask and answer questions, and gather feedback from you on the changes we are making.

I am interested in hearing what changes are being made at Articulate towards improving Storyline.
As a longtime user of the software, I expect issues as I'm developing. I'm not saying that I plan for issues, because I can't do that as I'm not sure where the problem(s) will pop up or what workaround will need to be implemented when Storyline doesn't work as expected. Which is frequently! 
While I appreciate many of the improvements Articulate has implemented, those improvements would be more effective if other aspects of Storyline weren't so buggy. 

Here's my wish. i wish that whoever makes priority decisions for what gets coded would be forced to go through this forum, and read every post from the release of SL2 until today. Place every post in one of two categories: "How can I do ...?" and "This no longer works or doesn't work as it says it should". Leave out the feature requests entirely. You will find that before SL3, the vast majority of requests were for "How can I do this?" Since, the vast majority are for "This doesn't work (any more)." I think that should point the way very clearly to where coder's time should be focused. Once the app works, features can be added. I recognize that there are a lot of requests for features that are far more difficult to implement than they are worth, or if implemented can benefit only a small niche.

Kerry,

You can't hardly be surprised that a message thread like this has started, much less drawn the amount of traffic from as many hard-core users of the tool as it has. A brief tour through Discuss > Articulate Storyline will yield many more examples of the topic of this thread. What IS surprising is there aren't MORE of these threads, either here or off-site.

Canned responses from Articulate's mouthpieces followed by...absolutely nothing...sooner or later tend to catch up with you. The standoffish attitude I have seen harkens back to the days of Adobe long before they bought their way into the eLearning development toolspace by swallowing up Macromedia. As a beta tester for Macromedia for a LONG time, and a charter member of the Authorware Inner Circle (a curated group of power users from outside the organization who contributed, skunkworks-style, to the NEXT version of Authorware) it was obvious how much Macromedia was invested in not only in gathering user feedback, but APPLYING that feedback to the product line, at a time well before company-hosted, web-based user communities. From the early-90s through the mid-2000s, there was no other game in town with the depth and breadth of Macromedia. It is thanks to their licensing Flash that you were even able to get your product off the ground. If more Macromedians and less Adobe-ians were running the show now, Storyline may well have never gotten the market position it has now.

Janet, I agree you shouldn’t have to plan for issues. That’s like planning for the power to go off in your house in the middle of a Zoom call. That shouldn’t be a normal part of your day. I'd love to understand your experience first hand so will reach out to connect.

Thanks for the suggestion Walt. I'm reading. And it is eye opening. 

Hey Joseph. Appreciate the insight and history. I joined Articulate because of the incredible impact this whole community has on millions of learners everyday. I’ve personally taken many courses made by people in this community and they’ve helped me grow.

I hear the frustration.

Since I joined, I’ve been talking to a lot of happy customers and recognize from this and other threads, there is a lot of work to be done. Silence was never intended to be standoffish. But you are right, it is hard to interpret anything but apathy if you are feeling ignored. Message heard loud and clear.