Saving Rise Source Files to Local Hard Drive

Problem:

Suppose I'm a Fortune 500 company who wants to standardize on Rise, and want to hire independent shops/devs to create courseware.  If I'm going to invest in that development cost, I need a way to keep all the source files for future use, in case we need a different shop to work on the files.  It isn't feasible with the current state of Rise, here's why:

The source files cannot be permanently saved, only "kept alive" by passing it from one account to another.  This is not a sufficiently stable architecture for large companies to invest in the platform, without promise of being able to keep what they paid to build.

Solution:

It would seem like a small step to create an archive file that could be given to any developer, who could then open it with a current valid Rise account. I don't see a downside for Articulate, and only an upside for larger companies to adopt.

What am I missing?

BTW: This is not a hypothetical, but is currently happening with our shop. Our longtime Fortune 50 client may actually bypass Rise for Elucidat, unless a solution for more permanent archiving source files develops soon.  And that would suck for all of us.

Unfortunately this request has been ignored for 3 years. A reply 2 years ago from my post sounded almost promising: "Saving the source files is still on our radar and this thread is included in the report."
It looks unlikely it'll ever get realised, unless the radar is a really big one ;)
Yes, it's a great tool, but what a shame we haven't seen progress here.

Hi there Glen and Jason,

You've shared some really valuable insight here, and I appreciate your honesty. It's really helpful for us to know how folks are using the new features we've added (like export to PDF) and how we can continue to improve.

I'd agree that creating a copy of the course each time you make a revision is a great idea, but I can also see how that'd make your Rise dashboard messy and overwhelming. Hopefully you're already using the new folders feature to keep your files organized. While moving a course to a folder won't remove it from the dashboard, it'll be much easier to find when you need it. 

As always, keep letting us know about your needs. We appreciate you sticking with us as we work hard to make a product you'll love!

For professional content development it appears that with your current model, Rise is not an option that can be used in most enterprise or even academic scenarios.

Apart from obvious legal or regulatory reasons that may require keeping source files offline, there is also the issue of the ability to edit something that you have “archived” at a later time.

Example: a client requests development of courses. Courses are created and delivered in the desired published format. In most scenarios the client requests-expects the source files to archive. The developer also keeps a backup for any future updates – changes (educational content is not a static thing...).

Then a year later the need arises to edit one of the courses. Unless there exists somehow the option to “upload” these source files to the editing environment in order to work with them, any “archiving option” is useless.

It seems that now, Rise “source files” are required to exist only within the active subscription.  Even assuming that the developer maintains an active subscription every year (regardless of actual demand for work) it is not realistic to expect the client to also keep an active subscription just for storing the “source files” for a project.

In reality, this has stopped us dead for proposing Rise as a development option in a lot of cases that it would otherwise really make sense.

It's really awkward to do anything with Rise after initially developing a course.

You can't store it internally so others can update it later, you can't transfer it fully and completely by email/CD/USB drive without having the receiver have a paid Articulate account, you can't work on it after someone else has left your company mid-stream unless they transfer ownership first (if it's an acrimonious dismissal that's not likely!) - none of these things are easy to do, and they're pretty standard situations in the business world.

Another limitation of Rise that I've found is when transferring ownership of a Rise course - you don't get ownership of the Review-published version of the course from the original developer, it's nontransferable. What that means is, you can't simply publish an update and have all your clients refresh their browser or click on the original email link again - you need to distribute a whole new hyperlink from your own Articulate account AND you lose all previous comments unless you also have the original developer's original hyperlink. I've been able to go in that way, thank goodness, and was able to see comments made after a developer had left our company. Generally, clients get confused when there are multiple emails and hyperlinks floating around, especially when the 'old' one still appears to work just fine. 

Cass,

I don't think i did anything so great but...

First I scoured the Storyline content library to see if any of the interactive behaviors and/or layouts were replicated anywhere that I could build in Storyline where I can export raw files, when I didn't find what i needed there (you might) i searched this site to see if there was anything here for me to leverage.

In the end I wound up redesigning the aesthetics of the layout, which weren't exactly the same as my RISE version but definitely close enough, which included the flashcard and labeled graphic interactions. Most of the RISE behaviors can be built in SL or Captivate it just takes a lot longer which is why i like using RISE for certain courses.

Sure. I submitted the feature request with reference to this thread for more detail - and to emphasize the apparent appetite of Rise 360 developers/users as evidenced here. It's going on 2 years now and it doesn't seem to have abated!

I also need a way to save the source file on a local hard drive badly.

Why? 

In our company (13.000 employees) I am currently the owner of the Articulate 360 Teams Account. Soon this Teams Account will be extended to minimum 20 seats. I will be the only one of these people who will have a permanent license for now. The other seats will be switched around as needed. 

1. I will loose overview if in the years to come everyone creates more and more Rise Courses and they all have to sit in my dashboard because I am the only one with a permanent license. The way it is now I already have 28 courses sitting in my dashboard and we only have had this software for 3/4 of a year. 

2. It would make the process of sharing a course back an forth way easier if I don't have to be the only person in the whole company that "owns" them. 

3. It is super insecure for everyone if we can't save the files. Whenever I should have a problem with my account it will be a super scary moment in which we could loose many important courses. I get the shivers just thinking about it.

It would obviously help a lot of people if you could come up with da file that we can save on a local hard drive and open up later from a different account again. 

Aileen 

My major client gave up on Rise for exactly the reasons Peter mentioned.  Can you picture your PowerPoint files cannot be shared offline and will disappear without an annual fee to Microsoft?

Precisely what I had to do with one of my clients in terms of transference. They were happy with the end product, not so happy about not being able to retain native source files.