Storyline xAPI editing (Variable Actor & Open Text Box Output)

Okay!  Before I close this up for good, I wanted to post one more update, in hopes it might help someone else someday or direct a future solution.

There is a way for an actor variable (in my case, "uName") to display in an LRS, in a very strange way.  Since I was able to get custom input to report to the LRS, I adopted a similar process for the "Object Definition" field in the javascript of the xAPI statement.  Screenshots are below.

In the first, you'll see how it is by default - the object or slide you put in the trigger.  By default, I had it set to the slide, so it output as %Project.SlideTitle%.  You can edit this to have the name in the object instead, in my case (screenshot 2) you'll see "%uName% Quiz Selection".  This will output, in my case, "Mike Quiz Selection" if I were to put it through.  This can be applied a few ways, this is just a case sample.  Say they fail a quiz, you can keep a variable counter on how many times with their name to output "Mike failed the quiz 3 times".  ("%uName% failed the quiz %failCount% times.")  There are many cases this can be useful.

You'll also notice line 15 of the javascript also has an Object ID - I tried to edit this as well to think  it is another variable we can control.  But as you can see in screenshot 3, the output to the LRS is not usable. It does have my custom input, but it's displayed like a URL and can't be meaningfully filtered.

Since "Actor" is static no matter what, it might do well to almost reverse the two in some circumstances.  Make your course name your static "Actor" and define your objects to have your true "Actor" name variables in them.  Again, backwards thinking, but if we're only given so many places to manipulate input, we have to make the most of each field.

My recommendations for Ariculate:

Allow us to utilize a variable in our Actor definitions when we publish the course.  When we want to use xAPI functions and have to use an LRS or an LMS without SSO data available, a static Actor severely limits meaningful data xAPI can give L&D teams.  With all of the foundation laid for xAPI support in Storyline, it is so close to being a powerful tool!

If that were the case, object definitions can instead get more fun with granular detail instead of forcing the variable actor in there.