Forum Discussion
Everything we know about Cornerstone on Demand and Storyline!
I thought I would start a thread about Cornerstone on Demand so there's a central place for people to read and add to. There seems to be a dearth of information about how CSOD and Storyline interact with each other as well as the unresolved issues surrounding it. I've spent many hours scouring the web and speaking with Cornerstone trying to find a solution. Hopefully this thread will serve as a resource for others going forward.
On a side note, I love Articulate Storyline. I started with Adobe Captivate with limited success. It was a very steep learning curve, but I was able to get some basic functionality out of it. I tested out Storyline with it's 30 day trial, and I will say that time-to-effectiveness was drastically reduced. It really IS like using powerpoint. Granted there is less complex functionality and interactions available than Captivate, but so far it's given me everything I've needed to use. The benefit is that the learning curve is much less steep too. Think of it as the difference between iMovie and Final Cut Pro. The latter can do some crazy effects, but the former gives you 90% of what you need and can get you comfortable in 1/4 of the time.
It's nice to have a properly-working content creation tool when you're in an LMS like Cornerstone. I have enough trouble in CSOD as it is.
So some of the nuggets of wisdom that I've found are :
- Cornerstone does not track SCORM 1.2 content properly. You cannot pull a lot of the reports if they are not in SCORM 2004 format. You don't have the option to select that course in the reports.
- If you export into SCORM 2004, there will be an extra section on the left with text links to the module. This takes up 30% of the screen, and on smaller laptop screens may crowd out the module window. Cornerstone says this is a Storyline exporting settings issue. I couldn't find any settings that shows/hides that section. The workaround is to resize the module to the screen, which doesn't get rid of the section, but at least fits the module.
- When reporting, you can get the completion status for a course based on quiz result or last slide viewed. You can also get a final grade for course. Storyline passes the results information for each question (including short answer) but you cannot pull a list of the answers for an individual. Therefore, it may not be advisable to administer any testing where you'll need to review individual answers
- You can get a list of aggregate answers for a module. e.g. I can see how 100 employees answered this multiple choice question. This is helpful to determine if learners are absorbing the course information correctly.
- Web objects (such as websites, or links to sharepoint documents) work in modules if your IT has added csod.com to the trusted sites
- Popup windows that open up the articulate module in CSOD will work if you add csod.com to the allowed list for popup blockers. Your IT dept can also add this to everyone's computer. Otherwise when learners click the "launch" button, the module does not show up.
I'll post more as I think or find them, but feel free to add to this list!
912 Replies
Bob-
You have to open a gps ticket with CSOD to have the launch window disabled. Only way to fix within. CSOD.
For scorm 2004, in player options within 360, you have to uncheck “launch in new window”
CSOD Support seemed to be stumped. They said the course worked fine for them in Google Chrome but not in Internet Explorer 11. (IE 11 is our current corporate standard so that's that.)
Surprisingly, they asked if there are any browser config/compatibility settings in Storyline that maybe I could change or check, such as forcing the browser into IE Compatibility Mode or forcing the browser to spoof an earlier IE version. (The answer is no, of course.) How could they be unfamiliar with Storyline??? CSOD is, after all, an LMS and Storyline is one of the most popular elearning authoring tools around these days. Sigh.
In the end, we decided to enable "Launch Player in new window" within Storyline. The learner is presented with a "Launch Course" orange button in an otherwise empty browser window. When clicked, the orange button launches another window on top that contains the course. An ugly user experience but we could never get the underlying CSOD window to display the course.
As suggested earlier in the thread, did you try setting IE Compatibility Mode to None? We tried it and it did resolve some problems for us. We are using SCORM 1.2 and HTML5 Only output.
We always set IE compatability mode to None otherwise we run into various problems. No idea why it works but it does.
I really suggest calling back and talking to another rep. I am a designer and our CSOD LMS admin and we literally JUST went through this last week. They should be able to turn off the separate launch window while on the phone with you so you don’t get the page with the orange launch button and separate menu to the left. We were in the asme situation as you - about a year ago we published everything as 1.2 because when we called GPS back then we were obviously speaking with someone who didn’t know and they told me they couldn’t do anything about it, we were stuck with the orange launch button and window that took up valuable screen real estate. Then we were meeting with some consultants last week and they told us all we had to do was call and ask for it to be turned off for scorm 2004. I was so frustrated, but tried again and when I called and obviously talked to a different person than a year ago, they fixed it while I was on the phone with them and it worked perfectly - after we unchecked the “launch in new window” within the Storyline settings as well. Now we can publish in scorm 2004 and the course launches seamlessly in one step just like all the scorm 1.2 courses we published.
Hi Bob,
I'm sorry that CSOD support weren't much help - but I'd agree with Chris that you'll want to look into disabling the compatibility mode of IE (which some LMSs have been forcing content to run in automatically).
We've seen this recently for users who are playing back Rise content in an LMS that has limited HTML5 support, so the steps below are what we've shared to disable compatibility mode for those users - and would be worth checking into for your Storyline course too.
Option 1: Change Your Compatibility View Settings
- Click the gear icon in Internet Explorer (or click the Tools menu if it's visible), then choose Compatibility View settings.
- If the website where your course is hosted is listed in Compatibility View, select it and click Remove.
- Click Close, then launch your course again. If the page is still blank, try the following method.
Option 2: Use the Developer Tools to Switch Document Modes
- Click the gear icon in Internet Explorer (or click the Tools menu if it's visible), then choose Developer Tools. They'll open across the bottom of your browser.
- On the right side of the developer bar, you should see an icon that looks like a computer monitor and a smartphone with a number beside it. When you hover over the icon, a tooltip will say Document mode (with a number). Click the icon to display a list of Internet Explorer version numbers.
- Select version 11, then launch your course again.
About CSOD's support response... That player frame is controlled by CSOD, not by Storyline. It appears clear that the LMS player frame is squeezing the content in your screenshot. Turning off the player frame in the backend should make the problem go away. We inactivate that feature since we don't need it and every course runs well for us.
Oh. The other thing you might try is publishing to SCORM 1.2. If you don't have big suspend data needs, this could remove the player frame. Also, I'm not certain but I don't think CSOD supports SCORM 2004 r2. I think they are at 2004 r3. It really shouldn't make a difference but this is an odd issue. These are things I'd try.
Every new client should learn this phrase: "Please set Scorm2004TocMenuset to false." Disabling the SCORM 2004 frame is a recurring motif in this epic thread. You would think CSOD might make false the default for new portals???
I guess maybe they are trying to conform to a 13-year-old standard by starting with it on, but it real practice, who uses multi-scorm objects any more, or ever?
Usability question: We have our online courses set to open full screen in CSOD. However, if the user's browser window was full screen when they launched the course, we have this issue in Chrome:
- The user clicks a link on a slide to an external web page (a policy for example in the Resources menu)
- The linked page opens in a new tab in the window currently behind the course (same as CSOD's transcript), and this window comes to the front.
- The user, not able to see the course now, thinks the course window was closed and does not realize it went behind.
- The user switches to the transcript tab and relaunches the course, and then tells us they hate how Cornerstone logs them out of the course every time they open an external link.
So far, my solution has been to change the Resources menu text to "Here are some useful links and documents. Tip: When going to outside links, return by looking behind the window that opens."
Has anyone else come up with a solution to this usability issue?
Hi Will, I share your pain. This is a common issue I've come across and it's not a Storyline issue - plenty about it online if you Google it.
Any material we've created, whether it be a SCORM file, PDF or otherwise behaves in exactly this way since an update to Google Chrome which makes all links open up in the existing window in a new tab, thus appearing over the course so our employees think they have lost the original course window.
Is there a magic fix that can be put in place in Google Chrome that solves this for multiple software? I couldn't find an answer, but it would be nice to at least solve it for Storyline files. (Our old Storyline 1 files work fine and are not overridden by Google Chrome)
Also it's worth noting if users opt for Internet Explorer instead they all work as intended.
If someone has cracked this I'd love to know too!
One rabbit hole I went down was to turn all of the links in a module into clickable Web Objects that open the link in a pop-up window (use Custom or Full Screen window size). I replaced the image of the web object with a screenshot of the hyperlink. When the user clicks the web object image, it opens the linked page a pop-up window.
This works great in Chrome (as long as pop-ups are ENABLED), but in Internet Explorer 11, the pop-up window HAS NO SCROLLBARS, even if the content doesn't fit vertically. At least that is a fix if you are linking to a page with very short content (or maybe directly to a PDF that will size appropriately). We were toying with the idea of linking to an HTML page with an iframe containing the real page we want to see if that would show scroll bars in IE.
Hey, thanks so much for the tips and assistance. Sounds like we have the answer; now I just gotta get CSOD Support to do it! I don't have direct access to the CSOD LMS because I am a contractor, nor can I talk with CSOD Support directly. We have to play "operator", where I inform our (quite capable) LMS admin, who then calls CSOD, who then tells her <whatever>, and then she calls me back. Frustrating and terribly inefficient.
Nevertheless, I will copy and paste the text of your suggestions & experience, send it to our LMS admin, and hope she can make CSOD Support understand what they have to do with their system to make it work properly.
Thanks everyone; the Articulate support forums are great. That's why I try to pay it forward from time to time by browsing the questions and contributing an answer/tip.
Hi all. I am having issues with Cornerstone and uploading Articulate Rise packages that have Storyline blocks in them. I keep getting 'Error in upload' responses. I am trying to articulate the issue to CSOD and they are clueless! Any help would be appreciated.
Hi Ben,
I am seeing the same thing. I tried uploading a Rise course with a
Storyline Block and got the same vague "Error on Upload" message. We have
submitted this to CSOD support - I'll let you know if we get any better of
a response.
