I recently made the switch to Storyline 360. I previously had Storyline 2 and was able to publish for the web, create the .aspx file, and upload to SharePoint through Explorer.
In Storyline 360 I can not get the same results with that process. Instead, upon clicking the .aspx file on SharePoint, I receive a prompt to save the .html file. If I click save, a blank window opens. I have tried this in both Chrome and Internet Explorer 11.
Is there something I have to do differently when using 360?
Hopefully someone more familiar with SharePoint will be able to chime in and assist you here.
I did see a related conversation in another thread here recently. Perhaps that information will assist you as well or you are welcome to reach out directly to one of the users there for further assistance if needed.
That's my understanding based on conversations I've seen in the forums Greg, but I do not use SharePoint. You are certainly welcome to reach out to the user directly via the 'Contact Me' option on the user profile if you do not hear back soon.
It looks like your email signature came through when you replied via email. You can remove that if needed and here’s a quick Peek video if you need help.
Also having issues with running Storyline 360 content on SharePoint. A while back I tried renaming story.html to story.aspx. The file runs on SharePoint, but because the code in story.html checks browser type and availability of Flash, it eventually redirects to story_flash.html or story_html5.html. At that point, SharePoint wants to download one of those HTML files.
I renamed those two files to have an ASPX extension, and then opened story.html in Notepad and easily found the references to story_flash.html and story_html5.html, changing those to look for the renamed ASPX files...
And it works! Not too much work to get things running on SharePoint. However...
I then ran into issues with imported content from Engage. Like Storyline, Engage publishes a handful of HTML files, which SharePoint insists on downloading.
So, I found all those files (a bunch, because I love the rapid development I can do with Engage interactions!!!) and renamed them to have an ASPX extension. And, without getting into the gritty details, I had to use Notepad to go into the code and changes references to the HTML files over to ASPX.
No luck this time. It appears that published Engage interactions seem to use JavaScript, CSS, and XML to generate the URL used in the slide frame in Storyline for the interaction. (okay, I got gritty there for a second)
The bottom line is, the Storyline content runs just fine (with either Falsh or HTML5) but the interactions result in a 404 page not found error.
I haven't tried, but I suspect the same might be the case for content developed in QuizMaker and imported into Storyline.
Yes, I could recreate my interactions in Storyline, but I like Engage.
I asked the SharePoint admin to see if they could just make an adjustment on the server to allow the running of HTML files, rather than forcing a download (Save/Save As) but IT security won't allow that to happen.
Anyone experiencing this issue? Any clues? Seems like this could be a feature request to allow choosing HTML or ASPX as the output "wrapper" format... or even a SharePoint tab on the Publish page options. ;-)
Gosh - what a tremendous amount of digging you've done to get this far.
I'll admit, I'm not familiar with Sharepoint and helping out with specific hosting environments isn't really our area...but I had one idea. Have you looked at publishing these Engage interactions separately and uploading to Sharepoint? You could then use those to link inside your Storyline file as a web object.
It's a few more steps but if it works, maybe it's worth it?
Hopefully others in the community who are more experts on Sharepoint are also able to weigh in here! Let us know what you end up doing in case others in the community come looking for similar in the future.
Thanks for your directions. I was having the same type of issue embedding storyline into sharepoint. I can at least see it on my side now, but my users are just seeing the loading wheel. Did you encounter that issue? I am trying to figure out if it is the way I am embedding the content or whether it is an access rights issue.
Hopefully John is still subscribed here to pop in and help you out. You are certainly welcome to reach out to the user directly via the 'Contact Me' option on the user profile if you do not hear back soon.
What I've had success with is renaming the story.html file to story.aspx. Most SharePoint sites are set to not allow the running of HTML files, for web security reasons. When you post an HTML file on SharePoint, the user is generally forced to download the file to view it. Instead, SharePoint allows you to use an ASPX file instead. The idea is that HTML files run scripts on the user's local system (opening it up to security risks) and ASPX files run scripts on the server side and pose less of a security risk.
So... the file that allows the Storyline course to run needs to have an ASPX file extension.
If you published with HTML5 and Flash, there will be two other files: story_html5.html and story_flash.html. In this case, the story.html is designed to determine which format is best for your browser (html5 or flash) and then redirect to the correct secondary html file.
Chances are your users' browsers (and mobile devices) are HTML5 compatible and that's probably the best format to use. Instead of messing with the redirect code in story.html and then renaming it to story.aspx, I just make a copy of story_html5.html and rename it to launch.aspx.
Then, when the whole set of files and folders are copied to SharePoint, have users run launch.aspx and things should work fine.
Remember that you need to copy all files and folders of your published output to SharePoint, in order for the course to run. Since SharePoint doesn't allow uploading of folders through its Upload Document button or with drag-and-drop, you need to use Windows Explorer (File Exporer) to do this.
There are two ways to do this: use the Sync feature in the document library that creates a local copy of the destination library, and then copy the whole published folder to that synced folder. Or, you can have SharePoint launch Windows Explorer and have it opened to the folder you can copy to.
One thing that I have noticed with this approach is that SharePoint likes to run in Internet Explorer. I've tried this with Chrome and it doesn't quite work.
1. Using Internet Explorer, open the document library in SharePoint that is your destination. 2. If needed, click the link in the lower left entitled 'Return to classic SharePoint'. See attached. 3. The user interface changes and shows tabs in the upper left for BROWSE, FILES, and LIBRARY. Click on LIBRARY. 4. On the LIBRARY ribbon, choose Open with Explorer in the Connect & Export functions. See attached. 5. This will open a Windows (File) Explorer window directly to the SharePoint document library. 6. In Windows Explorer, navigate to the published output folder for your course. This may be under My Articulate Projects. 7. Click on the folder and press Ctrl+C to copy the entire folder. 8. Use the Back button (<---) in Windows Explorer to go back to the destination folder on SharePoint. 9. Press Ctrl+V to copy the published output folder to the destination folder on SharePoint. 10. Once the folder is copied, click on the folder to open it and locate the launch.aspx file. The .aspx file extension will be hidden, there should only be on launch file listed. 11. Click the elipsis button (...) to the right of launch.aspx and the URL of the file should be listed in a box. 12. Copy the entire URL by selecting it and pressing Ctrl+C. 13. Now you have the URL of your course on SharePoint. You can paste that into an email or embed it as a link on a webpage, etc.
Hope my rambling makes sense. I may have to write this up in an article/job aid for the community, eh?
John - I have tried the instructions you provided here and am still having issues with launching a course from SharePoint Online (365). I have the file launch.aspx and copied the URL to a document to test it. I am always prompted to save the file - I only have Save or Save As options. Do you think this is a result of security in our environment or do you have any other solutions you have experimented with?
Hi Lisa - I have experienced that issue and you are right in thinking it is a security setting on SharePoint. The IT department has the ability to turn on the ability for SharePoint to allow HTML files to be displayed in a browser or not.
I haven't seen this happen with ASPX files, since ASPX is the native server-side page extension in SharePoint.
What I think is happening is you've copied story.html and renamed it to launch.aspx. However, inside story.html (launch.aspx) is code that detects your browser type and determines whether to open story_flash.html or story_html5.html. So, SharePoint when you open launch.aspx it is forcing a save of one of those HTML files.
I am leaning toward using HTML5 format for just about everything now, so instead of copying story.html and renaming it launch.aspx, I copy story_html5.html and rename it to launch.aspx. This way the browser 'sniffer' code never runs and it just launches the course.
Well, looks like you're doing everything correctly and you still get the Save As... prompt. What that tells me is that the SharePoint server is set to not allow uploaded .ASPX files to run and prompts the save as.
This may require you to contact the admin of the SharePoint environment (or the document library you're using) to enable running of ASPX files. You could also request that HTML files be enabled as well. If you can get that administrative change on the server side, you wouldn't need to do any of the copying and renaming. However... I've found getting those kinds of changes done at the infrastructure level is a tall order and affects security policies that most orgs have in place. So... this is the reason for the copy/rename workaround.
Since you're working in SharePoint, you probably have Office 365, which includes OneDrive. OneDrive is often more "open" to external content and may be set to allow ASPX and even HTML, sometimes. Again, this is controlled by organizational security, etc.
I'd recommend seeing if you can upload your content to OneDrive and test the running of ASPX (and HTML, while you're at it!).
Every environment is a little different (duh, John!) and it often takes some cajoling to get IT or SharePoint admins to adjust things for SL content to run. Having worked in IT and also on the Learning & Development side of things, you may be able to get this adjustment to security made without too much trouble. On the other hand, network and data security seems to get more locked down as time goes by, rather that getting looser.
My experience is that spending time on the workaround may be more fruitful that spending time trying to adjust an org's security policies.
Let me know if the OneDrive approach is possible and if it worked for you!
I'm also curious if Articulate is looking at SharePoint integration with Storyline. With such a ubiquitous corporate intranet/extranet platform like SharePoint, it seems like a natural place to distribution web-based training outside the LMS environment.
Thanks John. I have a question out to our IT team to see if I can find some answers about the security settings. In the meantime, I copied my e-Learning files to OneDrive and here are the results:
.aspx - still unable to launch (I am prompted with "Windows can't open this file"
.html - launches fine but I am prompted with a security message "Internet Explorer restricted this webpage from running script or ActiveX controls". I click "Allow Blocked Content" and am able to go through the content of the course.
Hopefully I'll hear back from IT soon and then can proceed. On another note, have you used any LRS options with SL360 and SharePoint? Looking for a recommendation of tools to investigate. Thanks again.
Sure, Lisa. Happy to help. Please let us know how things go with IT.
So OneDrive is locked down on .aspx, but allows .html, gives you a security message, and then runs. At least you've discovered it can run from the server! This will be useful for IT to compare server settings for OneDrive and SharePoint.
I haven't used SL360 with an LRS, so I'm not much help there. I suspect that it's similar to using it with an LMS.
I'd recommend using https://cloud.scorm.com to test your content before loading into an LRS or LMS. It's a great, free resource for testing content with several users.
On SharePoint online, html extension shows save option only than what I have seen. Aspx works fine, our site report is aspx page.
Then I responded that when I launch a link from an html or aspx file from the site, I am prompted to save. I included the site link, the two file examples, URLs, etc. - and then got this response:
You need to open it as url not directly.
I think I need to start over with another ticket/person. I am not sure how else to explain the issue.
71 Replies
Hello Erika!
Hopefully someone more familiar with SharePoint will be able to chime in and assist you here.
I did see a related conversation in another thread here recently. Perhaps that information will assist you as well or you are welcome to reach out directly to one of the users there for further assistance if needed.
Hi Leslie,
I learned that this process still works if I use the story_html5.html file to create the .aspx file. In the past, I always used the story.html file.
Thank you!
Glad you found what you needed, Erika! Thanks for sharing your solution here. :)
Okay, so you in order to create an aspx file you simply change the .html file extension to .aspx?
That's my understanding based on conversations I've seen in the forums Greg, but I do not use SharePoint. You are certainly welcome to reach out to the user directly via the 'Contact Me' option on the user profile if you do not hear back soon.
This post was removed by the author
No problem Greg.
It looks like your email signature came through when you replied via email. You can remove that if needed and here’s a quick Peek video if you need help.
Also having issues with running Storyline 360 content on SharePoint. A while back I tried renaming story.html to story.aspx. The file runs on SharePoint, but because the code in story.html checks browser type and availability of Flash, it eventually redirects to story_flash.html or story_html5.html. At that point, SharePoint wants to download one of those HTML files.
I renamed those two files to have an ASPX extension, and then opened story.html in Notepad and easily found the references to story_flash.html and story_html5.html, changing those to look for the renamed ASPX files...
And it works! Not too much work to get things running on SharePoint. However...
I then ran into issues with imported content from Engage. Like Storyline, Engage publishes a handful of HTML files, which SharePoint insists on downloading.
So, I found all those files (a bunch, because I love the rapid development I can do with Engage interactions!!!) and renamed them to have an ASPX extension. And, without getting into the gritty details, I had to use Notepad to go into the code and changes references to the HTML files over to ASPX.
No luck this time. It appears that published Engage interactions seem to use JavaScript, CSS, and XML to generate the URL used in the slide frame in Storyline for the interaction. (okay, I got gritty there for a second)
The bottom line is, the Storyline content runs just fine (with either Falsh or HTML5) but the interactions result in a 404 page not found error.
I haven't tried, but I suspect the same might be the case for content developed in QuizMaker and imported into Storyline.
Yes, I could recreate my interactions in Storyline, but I like Engage.
I asked the SharePoint admin to see if they could just make an adjustment on the server to allow the running of HTML files, rather than forcing a download (Save/Save As) but IT security won't allow that to happen.
Anyone experiencing this issue? Any clues? Seems like this could be a feature request to allow choosing HTML or ASPX as the output "wrapper" format... or even a SharePoint tab on the Publish page options. ;-)
Thanks,
John
Hi John,
Gosh - what a tremendous amount of digging you've done to get this far.
I'll admit, I'm not familiar with Sharepoint and helping out with specific hosting environments isn't really our area...but I had one idea. Have you looked at publishing these Engage interactions separately and uploading to Sharepoint? You could then use those to link inside your Storyline file as a web object.
It's a few more steps but if it works, maybe it's worth it?
Hopefully others in the community who are more experts on Sharepoint are also able to weigh in here! Let us know what you end up doing in case others in the community come looking for similar in the future.
Thanks, Ashley! Yes, digging deep!
I will definitely try publishing the Engage interactions and adding them as Web Objects, rather than just importing them. GREAT idea!!!
Glad that idea kept you rolling John, and let us know if you need anything else.
Thanks for your directions. I was having the same type of issue embedding storyline into sharepoint. I can at least see it on my side now, but my users are just seeing the loading wheel. Did you encounter that issue? I am trying to figure out if it is the way I am embedding the content or whether it is an access rights issue.
Hey Alice and welcome to E-Learning Heroes :)
Hopefully John is still subscribed here to pop in and help you out. You are certainly welcome to reach out to the user directly via the 'Contact Me' option on the user profile if you do not hear back soon.
Hi Alice and Leslie,
What I've had success with is renaming the story.html file to story.aspx. Most SharePoint sites are set to not allow the running of HTML files, for web security reasons. When you post an HTML file on SharePoint, the user is generally forced to download the file to view it. Instead, SharePoint allows you to use an ASPX file instead. The idea is that HTML files run scripts on the user's local system (opening it up to security risks) and ASPX files run scripts on the server side and pose less of a security risk.
So... the file that allows the Storyline course to run needs to have an ASPX file extension.
If you published with HTML5 and Flash, there will be two other files: story_html5.html and story_flash.html. In this case, the story.html is designed to determine which format is best for your browser (html5 or flash) and then redirect to the correct secondary html file.
Chances are your users' browsers (and mobile devices) are HTML5 compatible and that's probably the best format to use. Instead of messing with the redirect code in story.html and then renaming it to story.aspx, I just make a copy of story_html5.html and rename it to launch.aspx.
Then, when the whole set of files and folders are copied to SharePoint, have users run launch.aspx and things should work fine.
Remember that you need to copy all files and folders of your published output to SharePoint, in order for the course to run. Since SharePoint doesn't allow uploading of folders through its Upload Document button or with drag-and-drop, you need to use Windows Explorer (File Exporer) to do this.
There are two ways to do this: use the Sync feature in the document library that creates a local copy of the destination library, and then copy the whole published folder to that synced folder. Or, you can have SharePoint launch Windows Explorer and have it opened to the folder you can copy to.
One thing that I have noticed with this approach is that SharePoint likes to run in Internet Explorer. I've tried this with Chrome and it doesn't quite work.
1. Using Internet Explorer, open the document library in SharePoint that is your destination.
2. If needed, click the link in the lower left entitled 'Return to classic SharePoint'. See attached.
3. The user interface changes and shows tabs in the upper left for BROWSE, FILES, and LIBRARY. Click on LIBRARY.
4. On the LIBRARY ribbon, choose Open with Explorer in the Connect & Export functions. See attached.
5. This will open a Windows (File) Explorer window directly to the SharePoint document library.
6. In Windows Explorer, navigate to the published output folder for your course. This may be under My Articulate Projects.
7. Click on the folder and press Ctrl+C to copy the entire folder.
8. Use the Back button (<---) in Windows Explorer to go back to the destination folder on SharePoint.
9. Press Ctrl+V to copy the published output folder to the destination folder on SharePoint.
10. Once the folder is copied, click on the folder to open it and locate the launch.aspx file. The .aspx file extension will be hidden, there should only be on launch file listed.
11. Click the elipsis button (...) to the right of launch.aspx and the URL of the file should be listed in a box.
12. Copy the entire URL by selecting it and pressing Ctrl+C.
13. Now you have the URL of your course on SharePoint. You can paste that into an email or embed it as a link on a webpage, etc.
Hope my rambling makes sense. I may have to write this up in an article/job aid for the community, eh?
Let me know how it goes!
John
Thank you John! Incredible response and attention to detail!
Thanks, Leslie! Happy to help. 😊
Publish it to flash only and it will work. SharePoint doesn't like HTML5.
I recently upgraded from Storyline 2 to Storyline 360, and my old workaround isn't working any more...
The story_flash.aspx runs fine, but the story_html5.aspx gets stuck on the loading wheel. Has anyone found a way to get this working?
John - I have tried the instructions you provided here and am still having issues with launching a course from SharePoint Online (365). I have the file launch.aspx and copied the URL to a document to test it. I am always prompted to save the file - I only have Save or Save As options. Do you think this is a result of security in our environment or do you have any other solutions you have experimented with?
Hi Lisa - I have experienced that issue and you are right in thinking it is a security setting on SharePoint. The IT department has the ability to turn on the ability for SharePoint to allow HTML files to be displayed in a browser or not.
I haven't seen this happen with ASPX files, since ASPX is the native server-side page extension in SharePoint.
What I think is happening is you've copied story.html and renamed it to launch.aspx. However, inside story.html (launch.aspx) is code that detects your browser type and determines whether to open story_flash.html or story_html5.html. So, SharePoint when you open launch.aspx it is forcing a save of one of those HTML files.
I am leaning toward using HTML5 format for just about everything now, so instead of copying story.html and renaming it launch.aspx, I copy story_html5.html and rename it to launch.aspx. This way the browser 'sniffer' code never runs and it just launches the course.
Can you try this and let us know?
Here are the steps I followed - let me know if I am doing something wrong. I'm still getting the "save file" prompt.
From SL360, I published to Web, HTML5/Flash Fallback
In Storyline Output files, I made a copy of story_html5.html and renamed it to launch.aspx (I renamed the copy - and did not delete the original)
Copied all files to SharePoint using Explorer view
Used the Copy Link option to copy link from launch.aspx file
Pasted link in Word doc and launched it
SharePoint prompted to save the file.
I also created a hero part with a link to the launch.aspx file, but received the same prompt to save the file.
Thanks for any additional help!
Lisa
Hi Lisa,
Well, looks like you're doing everything correctly and you still get the Save As... prompt. What that tells me is that the SharePoint server is set to not allow uploaded .ASPX files to run and prompts the save as.
This may require you to contact the admin of the SharePoint environment (or the document library you're using) to enable running of ASPX files. You could also request that HTML files be enabled as well. If you can get that administrative change on the server side, you wouldn't need to do any of the copying and renaming. However... I've found getting those kinds of changes done at the infrastructure level is a tall order and affects security policies that most orgs have in place. So... this is the reason for the copy/rename workaround.
Since you're working in SharePoint, you probably have Office 365, which includes OneDrive. OneDrive is often more "open" to external content and may be set to allow ASPX and even HTML, sometimes. Again, this is controlled by organizational security, etc.
I'd recommend seeing if you can upload your content to OneDrive and test the running of ASPX (and HTML, while you're at it!).
Every environment is a little different (duh, John!) and it often takes some cajoling to get IT or SharePoint admins to adjust things for SL content to run. Having worked in IT and also on the Learning & Development side of things, you may be able to get this adjustment to security made without too much trouble. On the other hand, network and data security seems to get more locked down as time goes by, rather that getting looser.
My experience is that spending time on the workaround may be more fruitful that spending time trying to adjust an org's security policies.
Let me know if the OneDrive approach is possible and if it worked for you!
I'm also curious if Articulate is looking at SharePoint integration with Storyline. With such a ubiquitous corporate intranet/extranet platform like SharePoint, it seems like a natural place to distribution web-based training outside the LMS environment.
Thanks!
John
Thanks John. I have a question out to our IT team to see if I can find some answers about the security settings. In the meantime, I copied my e-Learning files to OneDrive and here are the results:
.aspx - still unable to launch (I am prompted with "Windows can't open this file"
.html - launches fine but I am prompted with a security message "Internet Explorer restricted this webpage from running script or ActiveX controls". I click "Allow Blocked Content" and am able to go through the content of the course.
Hopefully I'll hear back from IT soon and then can proceed. On another note, have you used any LRS options with SL360 and SharePoint? Looking for a recommendation of tools to investigate. Thanks again.
Lisa
Sure, Lisa. Happy to help. Please let us know how things go with IT.
So OneDrive is locked down on .aspx, but allows .html, gives you a security message, and then runs. At least you've discovered it can run from the server! This will be useful for IT to compare server settings for OneDrive and SharePoint.
I haven't used SL360 with an LRS, so I'm not much help there. I suspect that it's similar to using it with an LMS.
I'd recommend using https://cloud.scorm.com to test your content before loading into an LRS or LMS. It's a great, free resource for testing content with several users.
John
This is the response I got back from IT.
On SharePoint online, html extension shows save option only than what I have seen. Aspx works fine, our site report is aspx page.
Then I responded that when I launch a link from an html or aspx file from the site, I am prompted to save. I included the site link, the two file examples, URLs, etc. - and then got this response:
You need to open it as url not directly.
I think I need to start over with another ticket/person. I am not sure how else to explain the issue.