Suspend data in Storyline vs Storyline2
Apr 21, 2016
Hello,
we are struggling with a lot of our Storyline/Storyline2 courses in our SAP LMS. I think it has to do with suspend data. Our LMS provider is encouraging us to discontinue using SL because it creates so much suspend data, but of course we don't want to do that.
We have recently upgraded to SL2 from SL1 and the courses we've upgraded, which used to bookmark properly in our LMS, now create suspend data errors and the "resume" function no longer works properly. It doesn't matter how far you go in the course, if you close it and reopen it brings you back to the wrong spot (same spot every time). These are the exact same courses, published with the same settings yet the originals resume correctly, but the upgraded SL2 courses don't.
We have a couple of other really large courses that don't resume no matter which version of storyline we publish from. We tried publishing using SCORM2004, 3rd edition but they still don't resume properly. Not only that, but when we switched to 2004 they stopped tracking scores/progress.
When we publish in SL2, SCORM2004, always resume, and check the box "when running in LMS ignore flash cookies" we get an error that looks like this about 40-50 slides into the course:
[ERROR][SCORM_Wrapper_13.js] Internal Server Error Identifierer CMIString4096 too long, maximum permitted 4096 characters actual size of ------------insert a bunch of unreadable data here------------- is 4150
[ERROR][api.js] SCORM Error: 406 Text: Data Model Element Type Mismatch
What confuses me about this error is the maximum permitted 4096 characters. I thought that was a SCORM1.2 restriction, yet this was published at SCORM2004.
Any help with this would be greatly GREATLY appreciated.
thanks,
Alison
7 Replies
Try scorm 2004 3rd edition + as 1 and 2 have low limits
Hi Alison,
You can read more about the SCORM data limits here.
Make sure that you publish to SCORM 2004 3rd edition, as Phil mentions above. LMS vendors foolishly interpret the spec's data field size as a limit. It's a floor, not a ceiling. Wouldn't surprise me if SAP wasn't conforming to SCORM 2004r3.
You can limit the amount of suspend data stored from a Storyline publish by changing slide settings to reset to initial state on slides that don't need to store state. Question screens are big offenders, storing far more than necessary and it can add up quickly.
The progress marker can be truncated as you've seen above. This is a common complaint from LMS admins (a frequent complaint from me.) Please add to the chorus so that this can be prioritized for a fix;) Submit a bug (this is a bug to me) / feature request.
We have been dealing with this issue for about 8months. We just converted over 80 classroom courses to storyline and now are dealing with a complete nightmareWe have tried every combination of publish settings we can think of but still the courses don't resume properly. We hoped when we upgraded to SL2 the issue would resolve but now it's worse. Even our smaller courses don't resume now.
Hi Alison,
I'm sorry to hear that you've run into such trouble and continue to do so. If they're not resuming at all, or always picking up at the same spot regardless of even stopping at an earlier slide I think it'll need to be something our team takes a look at. You could also look at testing it in SCORM Cloud which is an industry standard for LMS testing (also where our team will begin testing) and you could use the article here to walk you through how to upload it and test it. If you do choose to share it with our team you'll want to upload using this form and I'd ask if you could share a link to this forum thread so that they're aware the steps you've already gone through. If you want to let me know the case # once submitted I can follow along as well to update the forum thread.
Hi Ashley -
The same problem commonly appears in SCORM cloud, unfortunately. The overload is a fairly well-known issue with the most prevalent cause I've seen being questions adding a disproportionate amount of data to suspend. The problem is a design deficiency in the way suspend data is stored that causes bookmarking problems if the data is truncated.
A few suggestions have been offered to adjust this including changing the storage order of suspend data to put important things at the front of the string or moving bookmarks to the SCORM bookmark data element. Hoping to see some movement soon.
Hi Alison,
As Steve mentioned the suspend data and the limits is something that you'll see at SCORM Cloud especially if you're publishing with SCORM 1.2 but if you're able to test one of the other methods such as Phil and I mentioned, and use that also within your LMS it may be a resolution for the current situation you're experiencing.
As for the lower amount of data restricted in SCORM 1.2, there have been users such as Steve who have asked for a change in the way we report that data within Storyline 2 (especially since SL2 includes more data/information than SL1, but SL1 can still hit the limits of SCORM 1.2) and we've shared that with our Quality Assurance team.
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