FORCED_COMMIT_TIME value of 60000 (60k)

Tuesday morning news, all! 🗞

A hotfix for Storyline 360 is ready: We fixed the issue where the FORCED_COMMIT_TIME variable in the scormdriver.js file defaulted to a value of 0 in the previous update, preventing courses from sending 'keep alive' messages to an LMS to keep learners' sessions from timing out. This update restores the default value of 60000, which sends a 'keep alive' message to the LMS every 60 seconds.

• Check out the release notes for more details
• Follow these steps to see all the latest fixes

Thank you for bringing this up, and let us know if you have any questions! 

Hi Chris,

I double checked with our team, that the 60000 = 10 mins in Articulate for the LMS Commit time, and you'll see another thread with that time mentioned here. 

If you'd like to see the data we're passing to your LMS, I'd recommend enabling LMS debug mode as detailed here. If you're still having difficulty with it and would like to investigate further with our Support Engineers we're happy to do so and you can reach out to them here. 

Hi Ashley,

Thanks.  That has explained a lot of what is going on (despite being related to Studio '09).

I've checked the lms.js file that SL2 packages up with the course and found:

setInterval("ForceCommit()", 600000);

So,

1. SL2 uses a 600000ms (10 minute) interval rather than a 60000ms (1 minute interval)
2. SL2 is NOT using the value in configuration.js despite it making sense to do so.
3. The value is hardcoded in the code rather than in configuration.js.
4. There is no option (such as setting the value to 0 like the comment suggests in configuration.js) to switch off auto-committing.  One would have to comment out the line of code in lms.js.

I can propose a change request for the developers to:

1. Amend configuration.js to set the value of FORCED_COMMIT_TIME to 600000 (10 minutes) in line with a 10 minute interval currently hard coded in lms.js.
2. Amend lms.js to make use of the FORCED_COMMIT_TIME rather than hard coding the value.

This will make it a lot easier (and a lot less misleading) to course builders who wish to customise the forced commit time.

Thanks,

Chris

Hi Alyssa, thanks for writing back. Sorry for being vague in my former post. Yes, I'm seeing a problem with Rise that's very similar to this conversation about Storyline. For the purpose of establishing some context, here's how Storyline works:

Storyline calls the ForceCommit() function at an interval that's defined by the   FORCED_COMMIT_TIME variable in configuration.js. With Storyline, even if the communication to the LMS is severed after some time has passed, I can still see from the LMS communication log that data was written back to the LMS up to the point where the communication was severed. It took place every 60 seconds, as defined by the FORCED_COMMIT_TIME variable. This is great! This is as it should be.

Rise does not have the same behavior. Even though the scormdriver.js file declares the FORCED_COMMIT_TIME variable, it is not being utilized even if it's set to 60000 (the same default value of the Storyline variable).

This behavior in Rise is the same as the original post by by Chris Walsh. (But, of course, the original post was for Storyline - which now works as expected.)

Hi Chris!

Thanks for updating us! I'd like for our Support Engineers to work with you so that we can investigate further. I've just opened a case on your behalf and sent over a brief email. You'll hear from our team shortly!

Hi Chris,

Thanks for reaching out here and I found another earlier thread where he did the conversion to 10 mins vs. your 1 min. Are you having similar difficulties with data not being tracked correctly to your LMS? Have you gone through the LMS troubleshooting steps here? 

If my memory serves me well, I believe this was set high so as not to add an overhead to the LMS, I also understand you can change this to any value you are happy with.

Thanks Phil.  I know we can change the value (a simple edit to the js file) and why you may not want to set the value too high or low.  I'm just questioning whether it is actually being used by the course and if it is, whether it is treating the units as milliseconds.  

The reason I question it is because I can't see anywhere where any JavaScript actually reads this value and the rate of LMSCommit() don't seem to tally with the value set.

Hi Chris,

I can certainly pass that along as a feature request - but hopefully we at least got to the bottom of the behavior you were seeing! 

Yes we did.  And thanks for adding it to the feature requests.