I am paying a lot of money to use your software. One of the main reasons we decided to go with Storyline was hopefully your software would have a built in timer for courses. Well guess what it doesn't have one you have to create one. Really! People have been asking about this for years, and the best you can do is well you have to build one or use a JavaScript file. Why should I have to build one when I am paying to use your software.
So Storyline when do you expect to have a timer to use for courses that people can use that need one. And not one for a Quiz but one for the whole course.
Thank you for posting here in the E-Learning Heroes Community. I understand from your post that this is a feature you really want/need and I understand it can be frustrating when you need the tool to do something that it can't do. Storyline can do many, many things, but there are still some things it can't do that we wish it could do. As a developer myself who's encountered the same situation as you (features I really need not being available) I can totally understand your frustration of having to work around or use an out-of-the-box solution. That being said, I strongly suggest you submit a feature request for this feature. It never hurts to get more requests for a feature as that does impact what features are developed. As of now, I can't give a timeframe or ETA for that feature becoming available so you will have to move forward with another solution for now. Hope this information helps!
Just to add to Nicole’s reply the JavaScript solutions work very well and JavaScript is a great way to extend Storyline.
You may also want to look at your LMS most will track the time spent inside the course and you may be able to get what you want there.
Mathew Bobby has some JavaScript solutions on his site. Also you may even be able to use the built in quiz timer to achieve what you want this is not just restricted to being used in a quiz.
JavaScript works great for those who know how to use it. I have checked the quiz timer
out and I don't think you can set it for 4 hours. The LMS does track the time but I need the timer
to show up in my course all the way through it and be able to stop and start when the student logs in and logs out.
I also need to add a 20 min timeout so students can't just sit with the course open and watch the clock run until they meet the required time that needs to be met..
From my experience and what I know, this sounds like something that would have to be done on the LMS side of things (re: starting and stopping the timer when a user logs in and out) . The Timeout feature is also often a functionality of LMS.
Your use case is very specific regarding the 4 hours. Even if Storyline had a timer, I doubt it would accommodate a 4 hour window.
You could build a timer using variables (or JavaScript) which is the feature available for one-off or more advanced use cases.
As far as the 20 minute timer, an easy solution is to create a 20 minute audio file with nothing on it, to keep the file small. Put the audio file on the master slide and have ti start when slide starts. When the user goes to a slide the master reloads and would restart the audio.
Then you can add a trigger to do something when media completes like exit course or give a warning dialogue box.
You could build the timer using an audio file (1 second long) running on the master that played again when media ends and also incremented the variables, not as accurate as JavaScript (possibly lose 1 second per slide depending on when you jump in the media file).
The JavaScript would not be difficult to do and it would resume when they restart the course, there are a number of other issues you may encounter like resume if you use scorm 1.2.
If you do not want to tackle the java script you could get a freelancer relatively cheaply to build a template that would work.
8 Replies
Hi Richard!
Thank you for posting here in the E-Learning Heroes Community. I understand from your post that this is a feature you really want/need and I understand it can be frustrating when you need the tool to do something that it can't do. Storyline can do many, many things, but there are still some things it can't do that we wish it could do. As a developer myself who's encountered the same situation as you (features I really need not being available) I can totally understand your frustration of having to work around or use an out-of-the-box solution. That being said, I strongly suggest you submit a feature request for this feature. It never hurts to get more requests for a feature as that does impact what features are developed. As of now, I can't give a timeframe or ETA for that feature becoming available so you will have to move forward with another solution for now. Hope this information helps!
Just to add to Nicole’s reply the JavaScript solutions work very well and JavaScript is a great way to extend Storyline.
You may also want to look at your LMS most will track the time spent inside the course and you may be able to get what you want there.
Mathew Bobby has some JavaScript solutions on his site. Also you may even be able to use the built in quiz timer to achieve what you want this is not just restricted to being used in a quiz.
Sent from my iPhone
Super helpful, Phil, as always. Thank you very much for adding that.
I have submitted a feature request.
Thank you for your feedback!
JavaScript works great for those who know how to use it. I have checked the quiz timer
out and I don't think you can set it for 4 hours. The LMS does track the time but I need the timer
to show up in my course all the way through it and be able to stop and start when the student logs in and logs out.
I also need to add a 20 min timeout so students can't just sit with the course open and watch the clock run until they meet the required time that needs to be met..
Hi Richard,
Thank you for logging a feature request!
From my experience and what I know, this sounds like something that would have to be done on the LMS side of things (re: starting and stopping the timer when a user logs in and out) . The Timeout feature is also often a functionality of LMS.
Your use case is very specific regarding the 4 hours. Even if Storyline had a timer, I doubt it would accommodate a 4 hour window.
You could build a timer using variables (or JavaScript) which is the feature available for one-off or more advanced use cases.
As far as the 20 minute timer, an easy solution is to create a 20 minute audio file with nothing on it, to keep the file small. Put the audio file on the master slide and have ti start when slide starts. When the user goes to a slide the master reloads and would restart the audio.
Then you can add a trigger to do something when media completes like exit course or give a warning dialogue box.
I love the audio file idea.
You could build the timer using an audio file (1 second long) running on the master that played again when media ends and also incremented the variables, not as accurate as JavaScript (possibly lose 1 second per slide depending on when you jump in the media file).
The JavaScript would not be difficult to do and it would resume when they restart the course, there are a number of other issues you may encounter like resume if you use scorm 1.2.
If you do not want to tackle the java script you could get a freelancer relatively cheaply to build a template that would work.
Sent from my iPhone
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