STORYLINE Usage on Saba 5.4.3

Hi, Mark!

Yes, you publish content out of Storyline, which installs as a single product on your PC, for use with Saba as either AICC or SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004.

Until this past February, I managed an internal Saba LMS for 3M, when I then took advantage of an early retirement offer.  We were on Saba since 2003 and Articulate products since 2004.

We were using Saba 5.4 SP2.  Storyline publishes to AICC and that worked fine, though with anything Saba and Articulate, I'd use the relay.asp or relay.php launch file to get over some Saba challenges.  For AICC, we used content servers (IIS) outside the LMS.  for single-AU courses we just entered the launch URL (pointing to relay.asp) into the Saba Production Repository entry.

I tested a few Storyline courses in AICC using relay.asp and they all worked and tracked finefine.

I just delivered two projects to 3M and they used SCORM 1.2. (Saba doesn't really recommend SCORM 2004 with our version of Saba.)

They were two multi-module courses, one with 8 SCORM 1.2 modules done in Storyline, 1 in Articulate Presenter, and one from Harvard ManageMentor.  The other project has one less Storyline module.  I used Simple SCORM Packager to zip them into a SCORM package for importing into the Saba repository.

All the Storyline modules have been working flawlessly, except the Harvard ManageMentor one, which was done in some other authoring tool.

One thing about using Saba and Storyline:  http://www.articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=hd0cc4e9mgvm

Also, we used the Saba 3.1/5.X template for all e-learning so we had to use this fix for SCORM:  http://www.articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=guauo7wk0553  - specifically using the ALWAYS_CLOSE_TOP in the imsmanifest.xml file.

Help?

Wow thanks for the quick reply and information - The way I read your response is that ... 'out of the box' STORYLINE does not work in the Saba Environment,  BUT but with some 'minor' tweeks it can work.

THANKS!  I will pass this information onto the developers who are wanting to try this new tool!

Yes--Saba can be very powerful but also . . .  a . . .  little . . . different . . . 

I just re-read your last remark.  I'd put it "Storyline mostly works well with Saba out-of-the-box.  But due to the way Saba implements AICC and SCORM, some tweaks in Storyline are necessary to accommodate Saba."

Gerry, 

I too am working with a very large org that is about to ban storyline because iPad bookmarking (via html5) is not working. They are using a patchwork Saba lms and I am not sure of the exact version. I REALLY like storyline and suspect a minor tweak will clear up this issue. Any ideas? 

Thanks, Ray

Hi, Ray!

I've not done anything yet in a real course with Saba and HTML5 from Storyline on a iPad.  Need to look at that later this week or next on a Saba 5.5 SP1 system.

Do you know if the patchwork LMS is version 3.x, 5.x or 6.x?

Well, Ray, you spurred to look at this early.

Got the access to my client's Intranet working on my iPad2 and got to their QA version (for testing) of their Saba 5.5 SP1 LMS just fine.

In Storyline, published a test course to Flash and HTML5, added the Storyline fix for SCORM 1.2 and Saba, and then set it up in the Saba production repository.

So far I've just launched it from the repository.  At first I had an issue with the content not displaying--I'd just get the Storyline whirling launch circle.  Then I changed the Saba template from the Empty Player to the 3x/5.1 Compatibility Template and the course finally launched completely.

And, so far (knock on wood), bookmarking appears to be working.  Now to test setting up an actual course, attaching the content and registering for it.

Okay, registered for course, launched it, exited it, restarted it, went back to bookmarked location, and then completed the course just fine.  Registration now on my Saba transcript.

I'm happy. 

Wow! I am impressed. Truly. I will walk through this info carefully tomorrow with my client/LMS folks and, knock on wood, hope to report happiness back to you. Best regards, Ray

Cool.

I still want to know why the course only works on the iPad with the 3x/5.1 Compatibility Player Template.  Storyline courses using the other player templates accessed with a desktop browser work just fine.

Need to look at config settings in the course to see if there are any helpful options there and/or do some Saba investigation.

iPad worked (launched, bookmarked, Quiz completion) with a test file. However, when we tested the course Mobile Safari crashed repeatedly upon entering the second slide (which contains layers). Not sure what to make of it as the test file runs okay...but the course won't! Ever hear of Storyline layers causing Safari crashes on an iPad before?

Have not heard of that--though I've not stayed up a lot on HTML5 "stuff."

Just put a slide with layers in my test SCORM 2004 3rd Edition course and re-loaded to my client's Saba LMS.

Played just fine for me.  No crashes with the layers.

If you like, and you can do this, attach or send me your test file output and I'll try it in my client's Saba 5.5 SP1 LMS.

Will certainly send you that file. The course is 32M though...

I can send it to you via filesanywhere if you like? But we'd need to take this conversation offline/private.

My website email address is ray@deregis.com

Hi, Ray!

Got the course and set it up on my client's Saba 5.5 SP1 LMS.  Ran through the entire course twice (and the second slide three times) and got no crashes using my iPad2 with mobile Safari.  It also completed fine for me (with the player template I used).

One thing I might try.  Looking at the course through windows and Flash, I see a lot of slide transitions applied.  I'd try removing the slide transition to Slide 2 for giggles and see if that might possibly make a difference.

There was one glitch on slide 2 (the Six Key Characteristics slide) but it only happened once (out of three times playing the slide).  On the first layer (Organization), the narration started and and then the course "theme song" played over it for a while.  Might be a miscue there somewhere.  May be causing things to crash for you?

Good stuff Gerry. Will look into it and get back. 

OK. The symptoms trying to get the iPad/Mobile safari/HTML5/Saba LMS to listen to the settings in Storyline are keeping the test team scratching their heads. Currently, we are able to bookmark and register a completion provided we use a quiz score as the completion criteria (AND the SABA fix mentioned earlier in this thread). If we use Slide Count for completion criteria, "THEN" the course registers a completion ONLY when we do not exit/resume the course. Wondering if you've ever run into that behavior before?

Hi, Ray!   Thanks for the info.

No, I've not heard of that.  I need to double-check but I think I have a test SL course in SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004 with completion by number of slides viewed in Saba 5.5 SP1.  Believe it was working.  Need to check.

I've been caught up working a bit on this:  http://community.articulate.com/forums/t/21925.aspx

My client has two LMS's (Saba for external learners and SAP for internal learners) so I've also been working on testing various scenarios and documenting the results in this (still in draft and incomplete). 

I'm getting a headache . . .

Isn't this fun? I'm thinking I'm chasing my tail at this point, But Thanks for being a great resource for Storyline/Saba especially Gerry. 

I'm cross posting a bit here

I posted the below in this thread: http://community.articulate.com/forums/t/34686.aspx Ashley's been great but we haven't found an answer yet. Does anyone here know if there's a SABA/Storyline bookmarking fix?

Here's the situation:

We've produce two modules using Storyline for a client. The client uses a SABA lms. The output option is AICC (and has to be). The publish settings are the same for both modules.

One module prompts the user to resume when returning and the other one doesn't. We'd like both to prompt.

That's about all I know - unfortunately I won't we able to send projects for review. 

Do you know why this could be or if there's anything I can do to resolve this.

Thanks

Andy

Thanks Andy - I told you I'd keep my eyes peeled! I hope that someone in this thread can help you! 

Hi,Andy!

Any chance of seeing the source file for the course not bookmarking?  PM me if you again.

Long time use of Articulate products and Saba.

One possibility that I can think of is if the course is very large, and uses many quiz questions and interactions, and the final quiz is huge, is the amount of resume data being sent to Saba at course exit is greater than the limits for AICC and the bookmarking is getting lost. 

I think AICC has the same character limit as SCORM 1.2:  http://www.articulate.com/support/kb_article.php?product=st1&id=jrrv9j8vulu0

Or Saba is storing the resume data as two data records (which how Saba handles things) and when the data is returned to the course at re-launch by Saba, something is not right in the delivery.  Saw that with Articulate Presenter and Saba 5.4 SP2. 

We never got to the root pf the issue.  We just turned off resume in any embedded Engage interactions and non-scoring Quizmaker quiz questions and kept final quizzes small to reduce the size of result data being sent to Saba.

Hi Gerry

I'm afraid I can't send the module over as it's a commercial project.

There are 7 topics and a couple of menu screens. The longest topic has about 21 slides (24 including branching) the others are mostly 12-15 slides with one or two questions in the topic. Is that the sort of length that would cause Saba a probelm?

Perhaps I should mention again that the other module we produced has only one topic and the bookmark works OK. So it does look like this is what could be causing the problem.It's also relevant that both modules work fine on our bespoke LMS.

I looked at the link you sent and the suggestions of reducing the number of slides and therefore data wouldn't really be possible here.

Thanks for your help - as least I feel we're narrowing down the problem.

Andy