Forum Discussion

FrankSchweigert's avatar
FrankSchweigert
Community Member
9 months ago

3rd Party Cookies affecting Storyline completion

It is my understanding that browsers accessing a Storyline 360 product in an LMS, need to allow the use of 3rd Party Cookies to ensure the presentation functions correctly. (Particularly for the tracking and reporting of course completion triggers.) With the major browsers all moving away from allowing 3rd party cookies, what is the work-around to avoid this and is Articulate planning any software updates to ensure course completion is tracked?

FYI - We have recently seen mixed results in regards to course completion tracking. Course completion is reported for most users in the same agency, but not all. And we have been unable to identify the culprit.  

 Thanks!

Frank

storyline 360
  • SamHill's avatar
    SamHill
    Super Hero
    9 months ago

    Hi Frank,

    If using the content on a SCORM compliant LMS, the content does not use cookies for data persistence. The data persistence is managed through SCORM data model element suspend_data, and the completion using the completion_status. Not cookies or local storage!

    If you are getting mixed results, there could be a number of reason for this. One of the major ones I see is network stability. A dropout in connection can affect tracking. Do you have any statistics on the percent of users affected by tracking issues? I would say ~1% would be expected and tolerable in my experience working with LMS. If you experiencing a high number, are you able to determine if the users are using a particular devices or in a particular geographical location where the internet connection is unstable.

    If you'd like to test your content and identify if it is a content issue, I would recommend cloud.scorm.com. It is a good benchmark for tracking content.

    Course completion is tracked in most instances, otherwise the forums would be filled daily with users complaining about tracking, as the majority of content is most likely deployed to an LMS.

    Cheers,
    Sam

    • FrankSchweigert's avatar
      FrankSchweigert
      Community Member
      9 months ago

      Thanks Sam!

      Yes, we are using a SCORM complaint LMS (Moodle - SCORM 1.2).

      At this time, we are looking at potentially 5-10% of users being affected (184 have accessed, 100 completed, 10 reports of problems). The majority of reported problems are within two locations, so network stability is possible. I will check out the testing site you suggested.

      Follow-up question - In the Moodle settings for the SCORM file, we changed the Compatibility settings to "Auto-commit" (SCROM data is automatically saved to the database). Do you think this will have any positive impact?

      Frank

      Frank Schweigert
      Training Manager

      Office/Cell | NEW NUMBER - 878-844-2035
      fschweigert@columbusorg.com

      [cid:image001.jpg@01DA8A53.917E40A0]

  • SamHill's avatar
    SamHill
    Super Hero
    9 months ago

    Hi Frank, 5-10% is a very high number and does suggest an issue on the LMS or user end. After you have confirmed the content tracks accurately and consistently on SCORM Cloud, it would be worth exploring network issues.

    Regarding auto-commit, yes this could definitely help as the LMSCommit("") method is not issued after each data transaction from the Storyline content.

    I'm not sure how frequently Storyline issues LMSCommit(""), but in a small experiment I just did, LMSCommit("") was only issued when I closed the content. This could be risky where there is network instability as there is only one chance for the data to be committed to the database. If set to auto-commit, it will increase writes to the database, and slow the response times down, but will make the data persistence more stable.

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