Forum Discussion
Storyline / SCORM: How can I check whether the cmi.suspend_data limit has been exceeded?
My question is: How can I check the amount of data stored in cmi.suspend_data for a Storyline course?
You can check the amount of data stored in cmi.suspend_data by adding a JavaScript snippet to your Storyline course and passing the result into a custom Storyline variable for display anywhere you want.
You can also log the suspend data and its length in the browser console using Developer Tools. As JudyNollet mentioned, the data itself is not human-readable because Storyline serializes and compresses bookmarking, variables, learner progress etc., into an encoded string.
However, you can measure its size using .length and display that value in Storyline. This is useful for monitoring how close you are to the SCORM 1.2 suspend data limit (~4096 characters). Once exceeded, bookmarking and resume functionality may stop working correctly. This is much less of an issue in SCORM 2004, which supports a significantly larger suspend data size.
In the example demo below, the course is published to SCORM 1.2. The JavaScript successfully detects the SCORM version and continuously retrieves the current cmi.suspend_data value and its length as the learner progresses through the course.
There is a big difference between SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 3rd or 4th editions:
There are more details here: Storyline: Exceeding SCORM Suspend Data Limits.
As that article says, the debug log isn't "human-readable." It does offer a few suggestions for decreasing the size of the resume data needed. But if you're using SCORM 1.2, just switching to 2004-edition 3 or 4 should fix the problem.
Thank you very much for your answer.
That helps clarify the difference between SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004. I understand now that the suspend data limit is much more restrictive in SCORM 1.2, and that switching to SCORM 2004 3rd or 4th edition may be the best solution if the course is reaching that limit.
I’ll also review the article you mentioned to better understand how to reduce the amount of resume data generated by Storyline.
Thanks again for your help!
You're welcome. Pay it forward when you can. 😊