suspend data and variables

Aug 21, 2012

Just wondering if Storyline stores variables in the suspend data so that you can retrieve them after a user has closed and re-opened a course?

9 Replies
Gerry Wasiluk

Yes and no, and I'm trying to remember the whole issue, which is embarrassing since I first reported it during the beta.

I hope I'm remembering this right but if course resume is not turned on, variables are not sent to the LMS.  Some of us wanted this ability regardless of the resume setting.

Phil or Steve--do you remember the details?

Phil Mayor

The variables are stored in the resume date and will be aviaiable as long as the user resumes or you force resume.We did suggest in the beta forum that it would be nice for use to be able to choose persistant variables and I think Gerry, Steve and I put in feature requests and got an ear pulling from Magnus.

He thought it was a good idea but there was no chance for version1 hopefully sometime soon.

Steve Flowers

Yes, by default the variables are stored in suspend data. When restoring from a previous session, the variables will be loaded from the LMS into your story. There are three options for that: always restore, never restore, and prompt. If you want to be sure that the variables are restored when the session is relaunched, it's best to choose always restore.

The other thing you'll want to watch out for is the number of variables and the scope of your course. If your LMS only supports 4K characters in suspend data (SCORM 1.2 lower limit for this field) you'll eat that up quickly with long variable names and large contents. Not such a big issue with an LMS that doesn't constrain the size of the field. Some vendors strictly interpret the lowest size as "the size". I've seen tale of folks running out of suspend data space.

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