Hi everyone,
I am trying to upload a Storyline file (SCORM 1.2) into our LMS, and haven't been able to. I contacted their support team and they said the error they see is:
"scormContentState.cmi.core.total_time is not a valid timespan: '24:19:20.97' "
They advised to contact the course author (myself) to resolve, or to contact the authoring tool's support. Has anyone seen this issue before and know how to resolve?
Hi Dana, the format of the timespan is correct as per the documentation for the SCORM 1.2 Run Time Environment. The data model element is required to use the CMITimespan, which is defined as follows:
A length of time in hours, minutes and seconds shown in the following numerical format: HHHH:MM:SS.SS
The only thing I'm unsure about in your message, is you sat it is an "Upload issue". This is a run time element, and would not affect import into an LMS. It may throw an error when running on the LMS, but not when uploading. Usually when there is an upload error, this is due to a poorly formed or missing imsmanifest.xml file. I've sometimes experience import/upload issues due to a character in the manifest causing the LMS issues.
Also, this element cmi.core.total_time is read only. The LMS calculates this time based on a cmi.core.session_time that is written to the LMS from the content.
In terms of SCORM 1.2 compliance, I haven't experienced any issues with Storyline content. A good test case is to use the SCORM Cloud service, which is known to be one of the most compliant SCORM engines available and they offer a free account for testing your content. You can also access logs and provide these to the LMS provider so that you can prove the content is compliant and not throwing any errors on a compliant LMS.
Good luck.
Thank you, Sam! This is good information on the specific error. Do you know how I would figure out if there is a character in the manifest causing issues? I just tried to publish a new version of the file again, and am running into the same issue so am not quite sure where to go from here!
Hi Dana,
Illegal characters can creep into the manifest through the course title. I've seen some LMS reject a course due to a square brackets.
Looking at the below image, check the Reporting and Tracking Options. Check the Title and Identifier and ensure you just have Alphanumeric characters in it. In this example, if I experienced an issue with import, I would remove the square brackets from the Title and Identifier.
Having said all of this, this should not in anyway cause any errors related to cmi.core.total_time, as this is a runtime data model element and not used during import.
I'm happy to take a look at your file if you like. I will treat confidentially and delete when checked. You can send to sam.hill@rebusmedia.com if you would like. I'm curious as to what the issue could be.
One final question, do you know which LMS it is? Cornerstone, Moodle, SuccessFactors?
Cheers,
Sam
Hey Sam, thank you for your response and for your willingness to help! The LMS is Kallidus. They are actually telling me now it's because the timestamp is too big. (Kind of confusing though because this exact file has been uploaded before, and all I did is make some small changes and am just trying to swap the file out). Here is what they wrote:
this is a total of 24 hours, 19 minutes and 20.97 seconds of content in a single lesson. In general, we advise that lessons should be completed in a single sitting, so this looks like it's far too much content to be contained in a single lesson, so although the file is within parameters, the total time is more than our system will accept.
I would recommend breaking up this content into multiple lessons, or if you don't expect this content to take this amount of time to complete, it would be worth speaking to the content author again to see how this has been calculated and if it is correct.
Do you know how I can change the file? It's definitely not 24 hours of content so I don't know where that number came from.
EDIT 13/03 AFTERNOON: I was able to resolve my issue! I clicked the 3 dots shown in the screenshot here (this was from a different course) and changed from automatically calculated to custom time, and used a time of 1 hour. That resolved the issue. The automatically calculated time was 186 minutes (still not the 24 hours that Kallidus told me it was) but changing this did the trick!
Oh, great work. Well done.
