Skip the Into Page > Immediately Start Course

Hi Crystal.  I've been following this thread for at least a couple of years, and I don't think there's been any sign of it appearing as a priority in Articulate's roadmap.  Hopefully the following may offer a little insight to help promote it as a priority.

I think the original user story was something like;
As a course owner, I want to turn off the front page so that the user can jump straight into the course.
I think this is an overly simplistic understanding of the request, so I'd like to elaborate on it so your Project Manager/Product Owner can be better informed for prioritising this piece of work.

WHY CLIENTS NEED THIS
During the Covid era, many of my clients are looking to diversify their offerings as funds dry up and the eLearning space becomes more competitive.  
As a result, many of them are looking at micro-credentials.  It ticks the boxes for a number of reasons, and from a Production perspective, this often means that a large course is created, then broken up into micro-courses.

In Storyline, you can publish an individual Scene, which means it's easy(er) to break the course up.  But for Rise, the combination of course file management, lack of section publishing, and inability to turn off the front page is a product-killer, and makes it very difficult for xAPI/SCORM packages without very serious workarounds. 

The production time/cost of creating multiple Rise Courses out of a single course is prohibitive, and frankly a pain...

As developers, we need an option for efficient production of micro-credentials with Rise so that clients can meet new emerging market opportunities (that's your User Story right there)

A WAY FORWARD?
Putting my Business Analyst Hat on, I suspect that the front page acts as a buffer for Apple devices (which block media if it's on the front page of a package and force a 'play' icon to appear).  The act of clicking 'Begin' meets Apple's requirements?  At least that's what I'm guessing.  So... the workaround that I use in Storyline all the time is to have a blank page, or a page with hidden objects that loads first, then automatically moves to the next slide... Not a play button prompt in sight!   

I'm not a coder, but I know that workarounds aren't ideal (tech-debt) and an appropriate solution needs to be found.  However, I hope that you'll see from this post that it's a strong emerging priority, and the current status of the Rise User Experience is not acceptable for Production or Deployment in the micro-credential learning space.

Thanks Crystal, and I look forwarding to hearing about this climbing onto the roadmap.