Publishing to Intranet

Hi Sam,

When Storyline publishes, it publishes a collection of files, which will all need to be included on the server, intranet, LMS, CD, etc. for the course to play properly. Since each intranet set up may be a bit different, I'd suggest looking at the web and CD publish options. The CD option may be the easiest for your set up, as the user would download the entire zipped output from the intranet and then play the course locally. 

You may also want to let your "guru" take a look at all the files included in the published output options and determine the best course of action from there. 

Thanks Ashley!

No problem. :-) 

Is it possible to publish storyline 2 as an executable or standalone swf?

Thx

Hi David,

Storyline can't publish to a single file - it publishes a collection of files, all of which you'll need to launch the published output from your LMS or web server. 

Hi Ashley. Just checking threads to find an answer to my query, which is very similar to this one only I'm using Storyline 2.  If I understand your response to David correctly, am I right in thinking that, after uploading the zip and the entire contents, I can't then just add a link onto an intranet web page that, when clicked, will launch the story.html file but that instead the user would have to download the entire zip file and then open the story.html? Or have I misunderstood?  Any other threads or guidance you could direct me to for help on this would be great.  Thanks.

Hi Adele,

How are you publishing the output? Storyline allows you to publish for web, LMS, Articulate Online, CD/local, or Word. If as I mentioned above, you were publishing for CD the user would need to have all those files downloaded and located on their desk top or local drive to be able to launch the course. If you've publish for web and are placing it within a web server - then you could point users to the story.html file and they should be able to launch that within your web browser.

You'll want to check with your IT team to see if there are any restrictions to playing HTML files from your server or what browsers it'll force the user to access it in, if any.  You can see our documentation of supported browsers here. 

It depends on your security restrictions, but probably the user wouldn't have to download it and unzip it. However, after uploading it, you or someone would have to unzip it. Even though Windows 10 can run one file (like story.html) from a zip package, it won't allow that file to run another one unless they are unzipped, and that is what needs to happen.

Thanks for your replies folks!  I'll go have another chat with IT armed with this additional detail.

Is there any reason why the LMS published file couldn't or shouldn't do double-duty, used both in the LMS and also hosted on an intranet or website, linking to the story.html ?

Hi Ashley, thanks for reaching out here and great question! When you select a publishing option, such as web or LMS as you mentioned, the published output will be formatted specifically for that environment. Different environments requires different attributes in the published product to make them compatible. If you want your course viewable in both an LMS and a website, it would be best to publish the finished course twice- once for the LMS and once for the website. This will prevent you from running into any unwanted behavior when uploading and viewing the course. 

HI;

I am pretty new to the publishing side. 

I am feeling a bit frustrated and so, can I verbalize what I am thinking as a solution for some insight.

If I take all the files that are 'published' and put them on my intranet.  Can I put them all into one folder (title it support documents) and then just have the story.html file for the user to click on.  If it is all 'housed' together will that work.  I worry that staff may accidentally change a supporting document otherwise.

let me know what you think?

Hi;

I am back - so I tried what was listed above and it did not work.

would not play

I didn't even just what I was suggesting

Any insights as to what more I can do?

Hi Stacey,

Welcome to the community and I'm sorry to hear you're getting frustrated with this! It's a lot to learn, so hopefully I can help break it down a bit further.

Storyline will publish a set of files and folders, and you'll need all of those up on the web server/LMS for the course to play properly. They need to remain in the same file/folder structure that you saw when publishing, and the one exception to this would be if you needed to zip the entire published output folder.

Once you've uploaded it to your site you should be able to find the URL/link that would point specifically to the file ending with story.html...if that's not clear based on how your site is set up, is there an IT person who could help track it down? 

The other option would be to publish for CD and upload that folder to your intranet. You would then want to provide users instructions to download the file and click on the Launch_story.exe file to play it. 

Hi;

Thank you for your reply

I did get further this time doing the CD publish

but now I am getting an error "navigation cancelled' when it tries to open the exe file

Hm, that was an error we saw earlier in Storyline 1 but not Storyline 2, which I suspect you're using. Did you extract the contents from the zip folder or just try to use the .EXE file? Also I'd look at the solutions here as it did assist other users who saw similar error messaging in the past.

Hi Ashley

thank you so much for the interaction.  I am using Storyline 2, but I am confused when I publish to 'CD" it doesn't produce a 'zip' folder?

I copied to my intranet everything exactly as it was published and tried to launch the exe file and got the error.

the tips under solution say that it needs to be on the 'root' of the CD not a file - I can't do that on the intranet.

I feel like I am so close.....I have a ticket in to the help desk but they are suggesting I copy the file to an external browser?  To me that sort of defeats the goal of having an intranet for learning and support materials.

Hi Stacey, 

Thanks for letting me know you were working with our Support Engineers as well! I see that you've been talking to Lea too and sharing some of the similar information.

The CD publish option would need to have the files at the root of that directory of the original publish folder, and you can choose to zip it after you've finished the publish process. Once it's uploaded to your intranet though I can't say what way it would need to be displayed - but did your internal IT team have additional thoughts? 

The folder that the "Publish to CD" creates should work "as is". Just have your IT people place it where everyone can access and run the Launch_Story.exe file, as well as all the sub-folders and children. If that doesn't run, it is most likely a permissions problem.

If it makes it easier to pass to IT, you can zip it, but it must be unzipped for a user to run it. As to "root of CD", that probably matters if you are using a physical CD, but for a network mostly means "Don't move ANY thing around except by moving the "Storyline Output" folder. You can rename it, but should be careful renaming any other file.

Make sure IT knows that there is no "file". There are hundreds of files, and the users need access to all of them for it to function.

Thank you both so much for your comments.

I will check with IT - but they don't administer our internal website "we' do - the communications girl for the most part

I publish documents, etc to it all the time.

If I am to guess I think it is the 'exe' like an executable file that is where the issue might be.  I will investigate that with IT and let you know how it goes.

Hi All,

I share the frustration here.  I've been a member of this site for a while now but I've only started using Storyline this week (the trial version).  I currently use Captivate (sorry) but it's easy to publish to your intranet as it generates just 3 files to upload.  The files produced by Storyline aren't recognised by our intranet so it's a big loss that we can only publish to LMS.

Is there any chance of this being looked at in the future?

Ok, so after an hour or so I realised that our intranet is based on SharePoint.  I changed the view to Windows Explorer and dragged the complete Storyline folder over (I skipped the JSON file which it didn't recognise).  Lo and behold, the course works. so you can ignore my comment above.  Apologies.  : )

No worries, Gary. Thanks for the update.