Forum Discussion
Skip the Into Page > Immediately Start Course
We are working with a large corporation that hosts the rise modules on their internal LMS system.
Here is an example of one of the assets we created.
With some hacks we have been able to add "share this" functionality to the site. We want our users to share what they have learned with the outside world. Part of this would be creating "Teasers" of the rise modules that would sit on the open web, for anybody to view. These teasers would then direct them to the portal where they can signup and pay for the course etc.
Here is an example of our "teaser"
http://dialectic.solutions/RC-DERM/101/shareable/index.html
I want to use the mapping tool option as an item someone could share. HOWEVER. I don't think in this use case we need to have them "Continue" or "Start Course" - I really just want them to come directly to the first lesson.
So that it's the first thing they view. Is something like that possible, has anybody come across a hack that would accomplish this?
I found the answer I was looking for... After publishing, you can edit the indexAPI.html file with the starting page of your choice.
- First you'll need the URL of the page you'd like to start on. Unzip the exported course and in the "scormcontent" folder, open "index.html" in your browser.
- Navigate to the page you want and copy the URL after "index.html#". Should look something like: file:///C:/Users/User/Documents/TrainingPackage/scormcontent/index.html#/lessons/-abcdefghijklmnops?_k=xyzmp30
- Go back to the unzipped course files, in the "scormdriver" folder, open "indexAPI.html" with Notepad++
- Search for "StrContentLesson" and find the line: strContentLocation = "../scormcontent/index.html#/preview";
- In the indexAPI.html file, replace "preview" with the URL of the page you'd like to start on:
strContentLocation = "../scormcontent/index.html#/lessons/-abcdefghijklmnops?_k=xyzmp30"; - Save the indexAPI. html file.
- Rezip the files and you're good to go!
Hi Melissa,
Thanks for posting this reply. When looking in the index file in notepad++ I can't find the strContentLocation = even though i've tried to search.
I don't suppose you have any ideas?
Thanks,
Matt
Apologies, I was looking in the wrong location!
Here's my hack for a "web" export.
- open your exported site and click on the "Start Course" button and in the address bar, copy everything after index.htm and save it for later
- rename the exported index.html file to index_target.html
- create a new index.html file with only the bare necessities:
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<script>
location='index_target.html#/lessons/z2g1--QmkDuYmxI-yuMEc4BMbBwbJle6';
</script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html> - edit the javascript you just created to use the url string you copied earlier (keep the hashtag after ".html")
- Now open the index.htm file like you did before and the start screen is bypassed.
Thank you for sharing, Bill!
Hi Bill, thanks for your hack. I'm a little stuck as to what you mean by "open your exported site" are you referring to once I download it or once I add it onto a server? I'm a little confused.
Brilliant ! Thanks!
I'm interested in this solution as well. I don't think the Start page is necessary - it's an extra button push and the format looks different from the rest of the training. It makes the experience slightly more confusing to an already new format for many users.
Here's my revised hack for exporting without a start page. I revised it after I realized that when you publish it to an LMS, the Rise content bookmarks the latest viewed page/block with a different hash in the URL, and my previous hack always overrode this. It's similar but takes a couple extra steps. For those who can't manipulate the code before being sent to the LMS folks, you're out of luck and at the mercy of the Articulate gods to save us.
- open your exported site and click on the "Start Course" button and in the address bar, copy everything after index.htm and save it for later (including the hash mark)
- rename the exported index.html file to index_target.html
- create a new index.html file with only the bare necessities:
<!doctype html><html><head><meta charset="utf-8"><title>Rise Redirect</title><script>preferredHash = '#/lessons/NQOrewsdLmW1234xri8bAXqBrluuBO07';if(window.location.hash) {vHash = window.location.hash;if(vHash.indexOf('/lesson') !== -1) {preferredHash = vHash;}}location='index_target.html' + preferredHash;</script></head><body></body></html> - edit the javascript you just created to use the url string you copied earlier (keep the hashtag after ".html")
- Now open the index.htm file like you did before and the start screen is bypassed.
- But wait, there's more! The course title in the upper-left part of the menu is a hyperlink to the start page (bummer, right?). So do a search and replace of the \scormcontent\lib\main.bundle.js file like so:
- open the \scormcontent\lib\main.bundle.js file in Notepad++ (don't even try in regular notepad)
- search for:
createElement(S.b,{to:"/",className:"overview-sidebar__title"
Note: the variable names might change from course to course, so you might have to search for just:to:"/",className:"overview-sidebar__title"and make sure it's the only instance in the whole file. - replace with
createElement("div",{to:"/",className:"overview-sidebar__title"(this makes it create a div instead of an A tag)
- And to further complicate things, when you're on the first actual page of the course/site and scroll up, there's a link to "Home" (AKA, the dreaded Start page)
- Search for className:"previous-lesson__link",to:"/"
- Replace with className:"previous-lesson__link pleasehideme ",to:"/"
- Open the \scormcontent\lib\main.bundle.css file in Notepad++ (don't even try in regular notepad)
- add:
a.pleasehideme{display:none !important};to the very beginning of the css, so the css on line 7 will look something like:*/a.pleasehideme{display:none !important};.clearfix:after{clear:both;display:block;...
There you go, that's what I'm currently doing. I'm actually doing several other modifications to the files to make Rise look and behave like I want.
Great work Bill, and thanks so much for sharing. I'll have to give this a go.
It's such a pain that this is 'a thing' ... but I've nearly lost hope for Articulate fixing it. Their backlog process is very opaque, so I'm not even sure the right people are hearing it.
However, I'll take the opportunity (again), to +1 the idea of having the option to remove the front page!This is a life saver Bill! Great work!
Hey Bill! Thanks so much for sharing this :) Do you happen to know if this still works? I get an error when I try to upload the SCORM package into the LMS! Thanks!
Hi Paul,
I went ahead and submitted your idea as a feature request. And since you're now subscribed to this conversation, you’ll automatically be notified as we share updates.
In the meantime, if there's anything else I can do to help, please let me know!
Hi everyone, jumping in here to give a bit more information from the Articulate perspective.
I acknowledge that two years without a response on this topic from Articulate is a long time. Our goal is to share helpful information and updates as we have them. We never want you to feel that you’re being ignored, and I’m sorry we haven’t had any new updates to share on this feature in a while.
We've been monitoring this thread and others requesting the ability to remove the cover page from a course. Though we may not always reply, we consider each person’s feedback and input as we measure the growing impact of feature requests.
For those of you who need to get focused content in your learners’ hands faster, be sure to check out Microlearning. Microlearning doesn’t include the formal elements of a cover page, like a course description or course outline. Learners can simply start scrolling to get right into the content. If you have more questions about Microlearning, don’t miss our answers to six common questions here.
Rest assured we’re still tracking your requests for the ability to completely remove the course cover page. We want to be as transparent as we can be, so we will share updates on that feature as we get new information.
I appreciate the reply. Microlearning is very relevant to our company, and a feature I had not noticed yet. However, for it to be useful, we would still need it to not have any cover page whatsoever.
Any possibility that the cover page could at least be optional for the microlearning template in Rise? If not, just out of curiosity, can Articulate give an answer as to why you don't want this feature? Seeing as it has been requested hundreds of times over the past 5+ years, I'd think it's one of the most requested features.
I agree with Tim Danes' comments above, but there is also a more basic use case:
As a course owner who wants to publish interactive learning content in an LMS AND easily track learner progress, I want to be able to break Rise content into individual sections that are navigable and trackable within the LMS.
Monolithic Rise courses that are embedded within an LMS are a bad UX. From the learner's perspective, they typically enter a course called, say "Introduction to Product Management" and see one SCORM unit named "Introduction to Product Management" or "Course Content" or something like that, then they go into that SCORM unit, where they then see more navigation (huh, why are there 2 levels of navigation?). Of course I can break up the Rise content into a bunch of little rise courses, and I can even remove the extra navigation (which is now handled by the LMS), but the useless intro page remains.
It's as if I enter the front door of a house, and I immediately see another house inside with another front door. I enter the inner house, and I finally see rooms. I can break the inner house up into a bunch of little houses each with its own front door that can be entered separately, but I really just want to enter a house and see rooms.
I think Rise is failing to recognize or is willfully ignoring what should be the dominant use case within an LMS. It is actually pushing me toward abandoning Rise and figuring out other ways to achieve cross-platform interactive content, which is too bad.
So.. is anyone still looking into this? The 5th birthday of the request is coming soon!
I was hopeful when I saw the announcement about themes today. My hopes rose more when I saw the Cover Page could be customized! I thought, "could it be that this update would include an option to disable the Cover Page?" But alas, my hopes were dashed.
Maybe it's coming someday though. There is space for it now! (See attached image with my hopeful interface suggestion).
This was just what I needed for a course! It's a one page introduction that leads into other modules, so no need for a lessons page since there's only one "lesson".
To edit the TinCan publish you'll want to:
- First you'll need the URL of the page you'd like to start on. Unzip the exported course and open "index.html" in your browser.
- Navigate to the page you want and copy the URL after "index.html#". Should look something like: file:///C:/Users/User/Documents/TrainingPackage/scormcontent/index.html#/lessons/-abcdefghijklmnops?_k=xyzmp30
- Go back to the unzipped course files and open "tincan.xml" with Notepad++
Search for "index.html" and find the line: <launch lang="en-US">index.html</launch>
In the tincan.xml file, add "#/lessons/-abcdefghijklmnops?_k=xyzmp30/" with the URL of the page you'd like to start on:
<launch lang="en-US">index.html#/lessons/-abcdefghijklmnops?_k=xyzmp30/</launch>
Note: be sure to include the # at the beginning and / at the end. My first attempt did not include those symbols and it failed when testing on SCORM Cloud.
Has anyone figured out how to manually edit the launch page with an xAPI (Tin Can) export?
