Storyline 360: Publishing a Course to Reach 360

Want to "reach" more learners? Reach 360—a frictionless LMS—lets you easily deliver training to a broad range of learners and quickly analyze training data.

How to Access Reach 360 To publish courses to Reach 360, install the April 2023 update or later for Storyline 360. Your Articulate 360 team must also activate Reach 360, or the option will be grayed out.  Note that Articulate 360 Teams admins are not Reach 360 admins by default. Learn more about permissions in Reach 360 and Articulate 360 Teams.

Read on to learn how to publish your course directly to Reach 360.

1. Publish a New Item or Update an Existing Item
2. Enter Title and Description
3. Enter Additional Project Info (Optional)
4. Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings
5. Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course
6. Adjust the Course Settings
7. Choose Reporting and Tracking Options
8. Publish
9. Distribute Your Published Course
10. FAQs

Step 1: Publish a New Item or Update an Existing Item

1. Go to the Home tab on the ribbon and click Publish.
2. When the Publish window appears, select the Reach 360 tab on the left.

If this is your first time publishing the course to Reach 360, the status will show "No submissions," as above. Once a course has been published to Reach 360, the status will display the date and time of the last publish.

Step 2: Enter Title and Description

1. Enter the Title text as you want it to appear in Reach 360. (If you have a title placeholder on the first slide, the title defaults to the text entered in that title placeholder. If you don't have a title placeholder on the first slide, the title defaults to the name of your project file. You can change the title of your published course here without affecting the name of your project file or the title placeholder on the first slide.) The maximum length for a project title is 80 characters.
2. Use the Description field to define the purpose of your course. This displays on the cover page for your course in Reach 360.

Step 3: Enter Additional Project Info (Optional)

Click the ellipsis button (...) next to the Title field to define additional project info. This info is for your reference only. Only the title and description will be visible in Reach 360.

1. The Title and Description fields are the same as those on the Publish window (see the previous step).
2. The image below the Title field is the course thumbnail. Note that the course thumbnail and course cover photo you set in Storyline 360 won't display in Reach 360. You can, however, set a cover photo for your course in Reach 360.
3. Enter values for Author, Email, Website, Duration, Date, Version, and Keywords if you'd like. These values won't display in Reach 360.
4. The Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline 360 that Reach 360 and your LRS use to identify your course. If you're republishing a course that's already in Reach 360 and your LRS, don't change the value in this field.

When you're finished customizing the project information, click OK to return to the Publish window.

Step 4: Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings

Use the Properties section of the Publish window to make last-minute changes to your course player and quality settings.

1. The Player property shows the name of the player currently assigned to your project. (The player is the frame around your slide content.) To make adjustments to your player, click the player name to open the player editor.
   
   Note: Don't set your course to launch in a new browser window. This can lead to inconsistencies in the report data.
2. The Quality property lets you choose adaptive or static video quality and control the compression settings for audio clips, static videos, and JPG images. The quality settings default to whatever you used the last time you published a course. To change them, click the Quality property, make your adjustments, and click OK.
   • There are now two video quality options. Select Adaptive to automatically adjust the video quality (high, medium, or low) to the learner's internet speed and prevent buffering. Learn more. Choose Static to deliver videos with the same quality to all learners, which could cause buffering. Drag the Static slider to change the video compression.
     
     Note that higher values give you higher-quality output but also larger file sizes. That can mean longer download times for learners with slow connections. Lower values give you smaller file sizes and faster download times, but the quality will be lower as well.
   • Drag the Audio Quality slider to adjust the compression settings Storyline 360 uses for audio.
   • Mark the Optimize audio volume box to normalize audio throughout your course for consistent volume across all slides.
     
     Tip: If your course audio already has consistent volume, you can speed up the publishing process by unchecking this option.
   • Drag the JPG Quality slider to adjust the compression settings Storyline 360 uses for JPG images.
   • Click Reset to standard optimization to use the default settings: adaptive video quality, audio bitrate of 56 kbps, and JPG image quality of 100%.

Step 5: Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course

By default, Storyline 360 will publish your entire course. However, you can publish a specific scene from your course or even just a single slide. This is helpful when you want to publish multiple courses from the same project file.

Click the Publish property, then choose the entire project, a single scene, or a single slide.

Step 6: Adjust the Course Settings

Use the Course Settings section of the Publish window to manage the following:

• Show Duration: Mark this box to show the estimated course duration to the learner, then manually set the time on the right. (The default value for Storyline 360 courses is 30 minutes, which you can modify.)
• Show completion certificate: Mark this box to provide learners with a certificate they can download when they meet the completion parameters.
• Due date: Mark this box to set how long a learner has to complete the training after they've enrolled. Then manually set the date on the right. You can set a specific date or a custom timeframe. When an interval for a set number of days is selected, the time period begins when the learner is enrolled in the training.
• Note for admin: Use this field to add a note for Articulate 360 Teams admins who publish courses in Reach 360. For example, you could tell them whether this course should be visible in the Reach 360 library.

Step 7: Choose Reporting and Tracking Options

Click the Reporting and Tracking button to open the Reporting and Tracking Options window. From there, you can choose how Reach 360 reports and tracks learners' progress. You can also send learner data to your LRS in addition to Reach 360.

Note: Storyline 360 always uses SCORM 2004 4th Edition when you publish courses to Reach 360—that means the standard option can't be changed.

If you plan on reporting to an LRS as well, click the LRS tab on the left side of the window. Mark the box to Report to an external LRS, then choose one of the following options in the LRS Configuration section.

• Supplied at launch: Select this option when you don't want to store authentication credentials in your Storyline 360 project file or when you need the option to update the LRS endpoint or credentials without republishing the project. Learn more about supplying credentials at launch.
• Manual: Select this option to enter the LRS endpoint and credentials right in Storyline 360. The configuration details will be stored in your project file, and you'll need to republish the project if you change them later. Learn more about the manual option.

Click the Tracking tab on the left side of the window and choose any combination of the following options. You can choose one, two, or even all three tracking options. Whichever option a learner completes first gets reported to Reach 360 and your LRS. Learn more about tracking multiple completion criteria.

• When the learner has viewed # slides: Mark this option to trigger completion when learners view a certain number of slides. You can choose a percentage or a fixed number. Then decide which slides get counted—all slides or just those with slide numbers. Learn more about tracking slides viewed.
• When the learner completes a quiz: Mark this option to track learners based on their quiz results. You can let Storyline 360 keep track of multiple quizzes and send results to Reach 360 for the first quiz each learner completes. Learn more about tracking quizzes. (This option will be grayed-out if your course doesn't have any result slides.)
• Using triggers: Mark this option to track learners based on course completion triggers you added to your course. (This option is grayed-out if your course doesn't have any completion triggers.)

Step 8: Publish

When you're finished making selections, click the Publish button. Your course gets uploaded to Reach 360 all at once, and all Reach 360 admins receive an email notification to publish it. The upload time depends on the size of your course and your internet speed.

After submitting a course, you'll see the following Publish Successful window, depending on your permissions.

If you're an Articulate 360 Teams admin, you’ll see two follow-up options:

• Manage in Reach 360: This opens the course you just submitted to Reach 360 in your default browser.
• Copy Link: This copies the link of your submitted course in Reach 360 to your clipboard.

Articulate 360 Teams Admin	Articulate 360 Teams User

Publishing Tips

• Problems with a firewall blocking you from publishing directly to Reach 360 or want to customize the published output? Here's what to do: Publish your course for LMS/LRS using SCORM 1.2 or any edition of SCORM 2004 on your local computer. An admin can then upload the zipped file to Reach 360. Follow the same steps if you need to upload a new version of the course in Reach 360.
• Note that Reach 360 has a maximum size limit of 5 GB per project. If you'd like to check the size of your course before publishing to Reach 360, publish it on your local computer first. That will allow you to check the file size of the generated zipped package.

Step 9: Distribute Your Published Course

Now for the fun part! Once you've submitted your course to Reach 360, an Articulate 360 Teams admin can publish your training and enroll learners in it.

FAQs

What's the difference between “submitting” and “publishing” courses to Reach 360?

Articulate 360 Teams admins and users can submit Storyline 360 projects to Reach 360. That allows admins to review the course before it's available for learners. Once reviewed and approved, admins can publish the course within Reach 360. Then admins can enroll learners and groups, or learners can discover it for themselves within the account library.

How do I update an existing project in Storyline 360 and republish it to Reach 360?

Here's how to publish updates to existing training in Reach 360: Open the original .story file or a copy of it, make your changes, and save them. Then republish it to Reach 360 by following the steps above.

Note: To publish your project as a new training in Reach 360, save your project as a new file. Then publish it by following the steps above.

What format does the publishing process use when publishing to Reach 360?

Storyline 360 uses the SCORM 2004 4th Edition when you publish a course to Reach 360.

What's the recommended workflow for collaborating on and publishing Storyline 360 projects to Reach 360?

Make a copy of a project's .story file on your desktop and send it to other developers for collaboration. Copies of the original .story file contain the same project identifier, so publishing the copy updates the current version of the training in Reach 360.