Sending projects to customers

Dec 29, 2015

I usually send my finished projects to customers as a zip file or an LMS file.

I have a customer that cannot unzip a file. How should I send the file so they can view it and upload it to a learning system?

 

 

 

8 Replies
Christy Tucker

If they aren't loading a SCORM file to an LMS (in which case it probably doesn't need to be unzipped), I would probably try to train them to unzip the file. If that means getting on a web conference and having them share their screen while you tell them exactly what to click, so be it.

My second choice would be to get FTP access to the server where it's published and just load the files myself. If they're loading the course to a website and not an LMS (which I'm guessing they are, since they need to unzip it and therefore aren't doing SCORM), that can be a viable option.

You can use any of the file sharing options (Dropbox, Drive, Box.net, etc.) to share a folder with everything in it. I have done this, but it's usually more work than just training the client to unzip files. Invariably, they don't copy all the necessary components or they don't put them in the right place, so the files don't work. Someone who isn't technical enough to unzip a file is, frankly, unlikely to be able to copy a folder correctly.

Mark Shepherd

Hi Linda:

Christy's covered pretty much the entire answer, here.

  • Most LMS systems REQUIRE you to send a Zipped file's contents to the server for distribution, so not knowing about this process would make things challenging at best.

My only other suggestion would be you could try to send the project contents using WinZip's ZipEXE function, making the package a self-decompressing executable...

....but that would not make things any easier for them if they did not know how to repackage this and send it to the LMS properly.

Nancy Woinoski

Hi Linda, you will not believe how many times I have come across this same issue - people just not knowing how to unzip a file. Whenever I encounter this, I send along detailed instructions on how to unzip the file every time I send the zipped file. If the written word does not work I get on the phone with them an walk them through the process while they try to do it - this way I can see what is going wrong.

If you just want them to review the file then instead of sending them the zip you could upload your project to something like SCORM Cloud www.scormcloud.com and just send them a link. 

If you are sending them the final version for uploading to their LMS then you should send the zip file with instructions not to unzip the file because, as Mark already mentioned, most LMS systems require you to upload the zip file - the LMS does the extraction once uploaded.

 

Dave Neuweiler

For project review cycles, I'm an advocate of loading the published files to a server and providing a hyperlink via e-mail to the reviewers. There's an added advantage to doing this over sending a ZIP file to the client -- version control from one review cycle to the next.

The customer can't always be depended upon to ensure that the latest ZIPPED version of the project is the one being viewed by reviewers, and if the reviewers browser cache isn't cleared, they may be viewing a cached version instead of the newest one.

By maintaining control, I can delete old versions, and put up the new version in a re-named directory. By using a re-named directory, the user's browsers won't look for a cached version because the path is different.

Mark Shepherd

HI Dave:

This is a great idea.  I don't do it in precisely the way that you do, but I can see the benefit of doing it from a folder-based approach.

The method I use is to label each ZIP file with the appropriate version/release number for each project, which has its own folder.

Also, it's helpful to have this information displayed in the player during testing.

When the project releases, I remove this from the Player, and away we go! ;)

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