Forum Discussion
lack of Rise innovation
Just talked to a former customer who went to Mindsmith because of the lack of innovation in Rise over the past four years. Groups like Maestro are filling in the gaps but I'm curious if others are leaving Articulate for competitors because of similar sentiment. I hope not. I spent the last year learning Rise and Storyline. Hoping this discussion prompts a conversation that gets engineering's attention and where we might hear about the future. ANNNNNDDDDD - everyone is doing AI innovation. What other features besides integrating with AI partners can we look forward to in the near future? Excited to hear more!
13 Replies
Depending on circumstances, it may be difficult or impossible to switch to another system no matter what the actual reason is.
We have a large collection of online courses built using Rise and Storyline.
It is not feasible for us to convert all these courses to a different platform. So even if we decide to use another online course development platform sometime in the future, we will always need to have one or two Articulate seats just to maintain. Using more than one development system has it's own set of problems.
You bring up some good points there Karl. I'm in a different boat right now but I thoroughly understand. What about the second part of my question which is really the heart of the post? I am wondering if there's been much innovation (excluding all of the AI stuff) and if any one knows of new features?
Hi JYates,
Thanks for sharing this so openly. It’s a really valuable perspective, especially given the time you’ve invested in Rise and Storyline.
Karl also raised a great point about how existing course libraries can factor into platform decisions.
We’re continuing to actively invest in both tools, with a strong focus on improving core authoring workflows alongside newer innovations like AI. While we’re not able to share specific timelines, you can get a sense of what we’re exploring on our public roadmap.
Feedback like yours plays an important role in shaping what we prioritize, so it’s helpful to hear where you’re seeing gaps. If there are specific areas where you’d like to see more innovation in Rise, we’d definitely want to hear more.
That hyperlink for the road map 404s for me. Is there a more recent page?
I am also struggling with the lack of updates for Rise. I feel very much like my niche of ID (customer education for SaaS) must not be the target audience for Articulate.
The sense I get is that the majority of Articulate customers are large government or regulated industry contracts that require Storyline exclusively due to having restrictions on using cloud-based products (total hypothesis, no actual concrete evidence of this, just trying to make sense of it in my own head). I notice that even in other ID communities like Reddit, instructional designers always talk about Storyline and never mention Rise.
What I would like to see in Rise are (in no particular order):
1. Ability to import/export a course in markdown format. This would greatly reduce development time, as well as reduce maintenance costs such as edits, revisions and other changes. For example, if I could use markdown to type:[LEFT IMAGE+TEXT BLOCK]  From the User Management screen, select a user, then click Submit to add them to the queue. [/LEFT IMAGE+TEXT BLOCK]then when I imported the entire markdown file, Rise would automatically create the course with the content in the defined blocks and images, etc., already loaded in. This would also enable us to use the markdown file in other backend purposes such as assisting a Customer Support tool another team is building to help customers find answers more quickly (pulling in content from both the knowledge base and the LMS).
2. A content library for updating uploaded screenshots (not stock images), similar to what Storyline has and MadCap offers, so that when the UI changes in the software I make training for, I can upload the new updated screenshot into the library, and then it will automatically update wherever it is in all lessons and courses.
3. Less AI stuff. So far it has been incredibly underwhelming and ineffective. The AI tool ignores anything I tell it, for example, if I tell it to make a summary in a paragraph not a numbered list, it ignores this. It strips out details and technical information and consistently reduces the meaning and content to be extremely generalized, high-level and vague, which makes it unusable for training. Additionally, it will bring in information not from the source documents because it "believes" it is relevant based on industry information it has access to, resulting in course content that is essentially a hallucination because it is not true or relevant to our training.
4. If there is going to be AI stuff, make it practical and less flashy. For example, practical is: generating alt-text that is aligned WCAG accessibility guidelines when uploading images.
5. The floating toolbar is annoying as all get-out. It is constantly in my way when I go to edit text. Could there just be a formatting bar at the top or side or in some more locked position so that when I highlight stuff the floating toolbar isn't covering overtop of it or blocking it, etc.
6. A way to annotate screenshots that I upload, rather than having to add the edit through another software. I suppose I could use the Custom Blocks, but those are not very mobile-responsive or accessible, so it makes it challenging to see the image effectively at different screen resolutions.
7. A way to create gifs in Rise after uploading screenshots.
8. Similar to Mighty, an ability to create those vector curves as dividers between blocks.
9. A setting in the theme so that I can establish the block spacing margins for all blocks instead of having to manually change all blocks to medium.
10. A setting in the theme so that I can establish that all hotspot markers for a labeled graphic will be a specific custom color.
11. A setting in the theme so that I can set a default a white background for all Process blocks, rather than the current default which is grey.Hi LoganPenna,
Thank you for taking the time to share the detailed feedback!
We appreciate the level of care you put into outlining the Rise 360 enhancements you’d like to see. I've shared all of your requests directly with our product team so they can be considered for future updates.
Have a great rest of your week.
Thank you — this already covers almost everything I had in mind.
I would, however, appreciate a few additional enhancements:
- Storyline Block in Mixed Media: It would be extremely helpful to have the Storyline block available as a selectable option within the customized blocks in mixed media.
- Font Settings in Templates: I would like the ability to define default font settings in the template. For example, headlines should consistently be 28 pt, in a specific color, and not bold.
- Dedicated Footnote Block: A specific footnote block with a smaller line spacing would be beneficial. While I can technically create this through customized blocks, editing text within it requires opening the custom block first, rather than editing text directly in a standard text block.
- Export to Word: The option to export Rise content directly into Word instead of PDF would significantly simplify the process of collecting feedback from stakeholders.
- Improved Copy/Paste Behavior: It would be great if pasting text from Word into Rise would automatically adopt Rise’s formatting—without needing the Ctrl+Shift+V (“spaghetti fingers”) shortcut. This functionality worked a couple of years ago and was very efficient.
- Toolbar Placement: I do heartly agree with LoganPenna the floating toolbar is often in the way. A single, fixed toolbar on the side that contains all editing functions would be far more convenient.
Thank you very much!
Hi IrisSchlabitz,
Thank you for such detailed feedback! This is super helpful for our product team to understand, so I've shared this with them.
If we are making feature requests, I'd like to add one for keyboard shortcuts. Rise 360 is going to be entirely responsible for my carpel tunnel.
AndrewBlemings- We appreciate you flagging this! The link has been updated.
LoriByrne Can you please share any details about keyboard shortcuts that might helpful? I'd love to give our product team as much information as possible! In the meantime, here are the current keyboard shortcuts in Rise 360.
Nice- some great suggestions here folks. I too agree with the AI sentiment being only partially helpful with its summarizations. Some other great ideas here too like updating the backend photos and markdown import.
