We are having a serious problem with a large course we just published to the Plateau LMS. This is causing a lot of problems with our company.
At our company, employees operate on one of two computers:
Regular PCs
Virtualized PCs
We tested this course on our regular PCs and it worked well. However, now that it is out, we have heard of these problems:
Runs very slowly
User must start the audio manually at evey slide using the player
At the end of a lesson, the course freezes up and will not re-direct to the first navigation slide (this slide allows users to choose which lesson they should do next)
Buttons missing
Test freezing
Most of these problems are on the Virtualized PCs, although we have heard of some of the problems on our regular PCs.
I'm not sure how well courses will run on VMs, but if this issue is happening with normal machines, it's something that we'd want to check out.
Out of curiosity, if you have the content hosted on an LMS, why would the users need to access it through a VM? Are they unable to access the URL/side for the course through their own web browsers on the actual machines? I suppose the reason doesn't really matter :) Just curious why that'd be something needed/wanted for this type of material.
In either case, have you been able to find any similarities between the machines trying to access the course that experience these issues? For example, are they using the same web browser, etc.?
You might want to make sure that the machines meet the minimum system requirements for viewing a published course:
Also, are you able to reproduce the reported issues if you view the course on your machine?
I work at a bank that keeps all branch employees on a VMs to simplify updates. The VMs do not have a web browser available on the actual machine, so they do everything virtual. Hope that... kind of makes sense. I'm still learning about it myself.
I am not able to reproduce the reported issues on my machine, but we do have a VM, and if I use the VM I am able to reproduce the issues.
It looks like our VMs run IE version 8, and Flash Player 10. Is is possible that having Flash Player 10 performs differently than 11?
Do courses have a minimum Java requirement? The Java on our VMs is the older 6.2.0. Could that be affecting it?
Also, we have uploaded 4 Storyline courses at our bank prior to this one and have never had this problem, even on our VMs. The only difference between this course and courses we have made in the past is that this course uses variables. We have about 30 variables in this course, used many different times. Could variables mess things up? If so, why does the course work okay on some PCs, and not others?
Lastly, we have done extensive testing and determined we don't think it has anything to do with our LMS. We uploaded it outside our LMS, and it still performed the same.
Ahh! That actually makes perfect sense :) Thank you!
I agree, I don't think it's an issue with the LMS, I think it's an issue with accessing the course through a VM, honestly.
Flash 10 is supported, but obviously different versions will have different updates and support content differently. The problem is that viewing projects through a virtual machine may not be supported. I know that working on projects through virtual machines is possible, but a lot of issues can arise with this as well.
What I would suggest is contacting our support team. Maybe they can give you some tips or advice for courses you need to view through a VM and help you narrow down the causes for the issues - if nothing else, hopefully they can help with the problems occurring on the "normal" PCs.
Please be sure to include a description of your issue. Please also include the URL for this thread in the form. Also, please share the case number with me. You're welcome to do so here, or in a private message. This way I can follow the progress of the case and update this thread.
We found the solution! On all PCs with Flash 11 it works perfectly. Any PC with Flash 10 it doesn't perform at all.
We are very happy to have found the solution, but it took us hours of troubleshooting to figure it out. We are truthfully pretty upset that it says that to view the course you only need Flash 10 to view the course. That was definitely NOT the case for us.
Oh well. I'm just SO glad that the mystery is solved. That caused us a lot of stress.
I sincerely apologize for the frustration and the time you've had to spend on this. We honestly were not aware of the issue when this was first brought to our attention.
This is definitely something we consider high priority and we are working to find a solution to this.
Again, I'm very sorry for the lost time and the stress this caused.
7 Replies
Hi there Nicole!
I'm not sure how well courses will run on VMs, but if this issue is happening with normal machines, it's something that we'd want to check out.
Out of curiosity, if you have the content hosted on an LMS, why would the users need to access it through a VM? Are they unable to access the URL/side for the course through their own web browsers on the actual machines? I suppose the reason doesn't really matter :) Just curious why that'd be something needed/wanted for this type of material.
In either case, have you been able to find any similarities between the machines trying to access the course that experience these issues? For example, are they using the same web browser, etc.?
You might want to make sure that the machines meet the minimum system requirements for viewing a published course:
Also, are you able to reproduce the reported issues if you view the course on your machine?
Thanks!
Thanks for your reply.
I work at a bank that keeps all branch employees on a VMs to simplify updates. The VMs do not have a web browser available on the actual machine, so they do everything virtual. Hope that... kind of makes sense. I'm still learning about it myself.
I am not able to reproduce the reported issues on my machine, but we do have a VM, and if I use the VM I am able to reproduce the issues.
It looks like our VMs run IE version 8, and Flash Player 10. Is is possible that having Flash Player 10 performs differently than 11?
Do courses have a minimum Java requirement? The Java on our VMs is the older 6.2.0. Could that be affecting it?
Also, we have uploaded 4 Storyline courses at our bank prior to this one and have never had this problem, even on our VMs. The only difference between this course and courses we have made in the past is that this course uses variables. We have about 30 variables in this course, used many different times. Could variables mess things up? If so, why does the course work okay on some PCs, and not others?
Lastly, we have done extensive testing and determined we don't think it has anything to do with our LMS. We uploaded it outside our LMS, and it still performed the same.
Hi Nicole,
Ahh! That actually makes perfect sense :) Thank you!
I agree, I don't think it's an issue with the LMS, I think it's an issue with accessing the course through a VM, honestly.
Flash 10 is supported, but obviously different versions will have different updates and support content differently. The problem is that viewing projects through a virtual machine may not be supported. I know that working on projects through virtual machines is possible, but a lot of issues can arise with this as well.
What I would suggest is contacting our support team. Maybe they can give you some tips or advice for courses you need to view through a VM and help you narrow down the causes for the issues - if nothing else, hopefully they can help with the problems occurring on the "normal" PCs.
Articulate Support - Submit a Support Case
Please be sure to include a description of your issue. Please also include the URL for this thread in the form. Also, please share the case number with me. You're welcome to do so here, or in a private message. This way I can follow the progress of the case and update this thread.
Thanks very much Nicole!
No thank you! Wish me luck
Good luck! *crosses fingers* :)
We found the solution! On all PCs with Flash 11 it works perfectly. Any PC with Flash 10 it doesn't perform at all.
We are very happy to have found the solution, but it took us hours of troubleshooting to figure it out. We are truthfully pretty upset that it says that to view the course you only need Flash 10 to view the course. That was definitely NOT the case for us.
Oh well. I'm just SO glad that the mystery is solved. That caused us a lot of stress.
Hi there Nicole,
I sincerely apologize for the frustration and the time you've had to spend on this. We honestly were not aware of the issue when this was first brought to our attention.
This is definitely something we consider high priority and we are working to find a solution to this.
Again, I'm very sorry for the lost time and the stress this caused.
Thank you,
Christine
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