Forum Discussion
How happy are we with feature request and bug handling at Articulate?
It would be great to get some community feedback on how happy people are with the Storyline360 product, especially when it comes to bug fixing and feature releases.
I've been getting more and more frustrated lately with the ridiculously slow resolution to bugs. It's not unusual to see forum posts outlining issues with the software, originally posted 2 years ago, and with posts days old reporting the same issue as part of the discussion.
I had a personal experience recently. I received an email informing me a bug had been resolved. I was excited, as I'd just reported a bug that month. However, on reading the email, it was a bug that had been reported 2 years ago.
Is 2 years an acceptable turnaround time for a bug to be resolved? In that time there had been multiple patches, updates etc. Some great enhancements, but they didn't see fit to fix a bug for a couple of years. I'd forgotten about it, and obviously been working around it subconsciously.
I think Storyline is a good product for certain tasks, but the transparency in regards to how issues and feature requests are handled isn't good. We as a community cannot see existing bugs that have been reported and accepted as bugs (not surprised if they are 2 years in the fixing) or how the feature requests are handled.
Do we need user group representation to apply more pressure to the people at Storyline making the decisions? I think the current process doesn't support the users of the software very well. The lack of transparency puts us in a position where we have to assume, "maybe I'm the only one who feels this way" when looking at some of the comments on the forum say otherwise.
Thanks for reading if you got this far, but would be great to hear from others what their experience has been (good & bad).
I completely agree with you. And 2 years is a short period of time in Articulate eyes im afraid. If you search the forum you find bugs that are around 10 years ! In my eyes thats unacceptable.
Especially when there have been updates and fixes on that specific part.I also agree. Not only can bug fixes take inordinate amounts of time to be resolved but there is also an almost continuous procession of newly introduced bugs that thread their way into the product with the monthly updates. It can be a stressful experience working with Storyline!
Indeed companies i worked for...tell their employees... DO NOT update Articulate the moment you get an update announcement...as they donot test properly. We first want to test internally whether all functionality that we need is fine... we tell you all when an update is safe. And that was true in companies i worked in about 7 years ago !!!! This has not changed since.
Yes, always risky to update immediately and BETA test, which can sometimes be frustrating when you see a feature update you've been waiting for.
I suspect they have only one dev that does all the work and the rest of the company are just sales people and managers.
Yes. I've made this comment myself before. Two+ years on bug resolution certainly gives the impression.
I did think of you as I wrote this. I wondered if you might pop-up.
I'd be happy if it was cool aid. It's mostly brine.
One other pain point for us is the 32bit infrastructure that Storyline is built on. Tech advanced so much but Storyline is still working like 15 years ago.
A 64 bit Storyline build would be the way forwards. I logged that request with Articulate some time back (as many other users I spoke to about this have). 64-bit code using modern programming methods would avoid legacy issues like app crashes, corruptions to images and files and general bugginess that tends to occur after adding a significantly large amount of slides and video (even after compressing video heavily). Fellow IDs I have spoken to on these matters would rather not deal with attempts at file imports from projects with glitchiness/crashing issues, or pinpointing which slides are causing publishing problems (i.e. replacing corrupt images that cause the project to hang when hosted) moving forwards.
Funny to see you popup ;-) Too bad you bailed the community, but i do understand.
Im sorry for my choice of words... indeed you didnot bail. And i agree with you. Nevertheless there is alas little competition at least in Europe for Articulate. If you ever start a company developing competitive tools to Storyline, i will join :-)
Storyline is the absolutely worst product I have ever worked with - directly followed by Rise. Bugs barely ever get fixed, much-demanded feature requests are ignored for years and there is absolutely zero transparency.
On a side note I am always baffled how an extremely simple course preview can take so long to render, when Premiere can pre-render a video project in real-time on the same hardware.This happens because Storyline is an ancient app that runs on 32bit.
Ah... that would explain a lot.
This is the kind of response from Articulate that we get and understand it to mean "it's not going to happen". This from a request for PX and % configurable corner radius on rectangles. The type we are familiar with through GD programs and CSS. I can't beleive this has to be classified as a "feature" request, and when it is finally introduce in another 5 years, they will release it with fanfare.
And this one for the bug switching between Slide and Layer templates, that has been around for as long as I can remember:
This second one is really frustrating, as I know this would have been reported several times and articulate would have been aware of it for years, but have chosen not to do anything about it. In the response, there is no update on when this bug might be fixed.
They don't care because money is coming and Lucy gets her payment every month so no need to fix something that is working.
