Storyline 360: Publishing a Course for LMS/LRS Distribution
If you’re using a learning management system (LMS), a learning record store (LRS), or both to distribute and track e-learning content, you’ll want to use the LMS/LRS publishing option in Storyline 360. Here’s how. Enter Title, Description, and Folder Location Enter Additional Project Info (Optional) Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course Choose Reporting and Tracking Options Publish Distribute Your Published Course Step 1: Enter Title, Description, and Folder Location Go to the Home tab on the ribbon and click Publish. When the Publish window appears, select the LMS / LRStab on the left. Enter the Title the way you want it to appear in your published output. (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; the maximum length for each output folder name is eight words. Use the Description field to define the purpose of your course. It won’t appear in your published output. Use the Folder field to choose where you want to publish your course—for example, your computer desktop. Click the ellipsis button (...) to browse to a location. Storyline 360 will create a new folder in that spot with all the files needed to operate your course. Tips: Always publish to your local hard drive. Publishing to a network drive or a USB drive can cause problems with your published output. After publishing to your local hard drive, upload the output to your LMS, LRS, or both for testing and distribution. Install the November 2021 update or later for Storyline 360 to send results to an LRS. Learn more. Step 2: Enter Additional Project Info (Optional) Click the ellipsis button (...) next to the Title field todefine additional project information. Currently, this information is for your reference only. It won’t be visible in your published output. The Title and Description fields are the same as those on the Publish window (see the previous step). The image below the Title fieldisthe course thumbnail. By default, Storyline 360 uses an image of the first slide in your course, but you can choose a different image. Just click the hyperlinked text below the image, then select a different slide or clickPicture from Fileto choose an image on your hard drive. You can enter values for the Author, Email, Website, Duration, Date, Version, and Keywords (separated by commas) fields. The Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline 360 that your LMS/LRS uses to identify your course. If you’re republishing a course that’s already in your LMS/LRS, don’t change the value in this field. When you’re finished customizing the project information, click OKto return to the Publish window. Step 3: 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. 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 theplayer editor. 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 (which means 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 4: Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course By default, Storyline 360 will publish your entire course. However, you can now choose to 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. Just click the Publish property, then choose the entire project, a single scene, or a single slide. Step 5: Choose Reporting and Tracking Options Click the Reporting and Tracking button to open the following window, where you can choose how your LMS/LRS reports and tracks learners’ progress. Click the LMS tab in the upper left corner, then choose a standard from the Report to an LMS drop-down. Ask your LMS administrator if you’re not sure which standard to use. Storyline 360 supports cmi5, xAPI (Tin Can API), SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2, and AICC. Complete the fields in the LMS Course Information section with these tips in mind: The course Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline 360 that your LMS/LRS uses to identify your course. If you’re republishing a course that’s already in your LMS/LRS, don’t change the value in this field. If you choose xAPI and need to change this value, avoid special characters and spaces. For SCORM, the LMS Lesson SCORM Information section displays in addition to the LMS Course Information section. The values in the Title and Identifier fields default to the course title. If you have a title placeholder on the first slide, the Title and Identifier fields default to the text entered in that title placeholder instead. This Identifier appears in the imsmanifest.xml file for your course. The file uses a digestible name for the course Identifier, the unique string of characters assigned by Storyline 360. If you’re republishing a course that’s already in your LMS/LRS, don’t change the values in these fields. For xAPI, the following fields display: Activity ID: Your LMS and LRS use this value to identify activities in a course. The unique string of characters in the reference is the same as the value for the course’s Identifier (see above). If you need to change this value, use a valid URN (Uniform Resource Name), then upload the published course to your LMS/LRS for proper testing. Launch URL: If you plan to host the content on a server that’s separate from your LMS, you must enter the full URL for the story.html file. Language Code: This field isn’t mandatory, but you can enter a supported language code to change the language of the tincan.xml file. If you’re unsure, leave this field blank to set the language value in the tincan.xml file to und (undetermined). For SCORM and AICC content, choose your LMS Reporting option. This is the wording you want your LMS to display for learners’ statuses in reports. (This option isn’t available or necessary for cmi5 or xAPI content.) 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 section called LRS Configuration. Learn more about LRS support. 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 chooseany combination of the following options.You can choose one, two, or even all three tracking options. Whichever option a learner completes first is the one that gets reported to your LMS/LRS.Learn more about tracking multiple completion criteria. When the learner has viewed# slides: Mark this option to trigger course completion when learners view acertain 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 your LMS/LRS 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 oncourse completion triggers you added to your course. (This option is grayed-out if your course doesn’t have any completion triggers.) Click OK to save your changes. Step 6: Publish When you’re finished making selections, click the Publish button. When the publishing process is complete, you’ll see the Publish Successful window with several follow-up options. View Project This launches the published course in your default web browser. However, it’s best to upload the published course to your LMS/LRS for proper testing. Email This opens a new email message with a zipped file of your published course attached. This option is helpful if you need to send your course to an LMS/LRS administrator for deployment. FTP This opens a window where you can enter your FTP credentials and transfer your output to a server. Zip This creates a zipped version of your course files in the same location where your course was published. This is the most common choice when you publish for LMS/LRS. Upload the zipped course to your LMS/LRS. Open This opens a file viewer where you can see the files Storyline 360 just created. There will be multiple files and folders for a published course. Tip:If your LMS requires you to identify the file that launches your course, point to index_lms.html . Step 7: Distribute Your Published Course Now that you’ve published your course, it’s time to upload it to your LMS/LRS. The steps for this are different for each LMS/LRS. Contact your LMS/LRS administrator if you need help uploading, launching, or tracking content.Storyline 360: Replacing Fonts
Quickly find and replace fonts throughout a project. From Slide View, go to the Home tab on the Storyline ribbon, click the drop-down arrow beside Find/Replace, and choose Replace Fonts. Use the Replace drop-down list to select the font you want to replace. You’ll only see the fonts currently in use in your project. Then use the With drop-down list to choose a new font. Click Replace. If you want to replace another font while the Replace Fonts window is still open, repeat steps 2-4. When you’re done, click Close to exit the window.Review 360: Use Comments to Give Feedback
While viewing a Review 360 item, use the sidebar to post feedback and participate in discussions along the way. Learn more about working with comments below. Read Comments Post Comments Edit Comments Delete Comments Resolve and Reopen Comments Export Comments to CSV and PDF Files Disable and Re-Enable Comments Read Comments All reviewers can view comments. And there are different ways to work with comments, depending on whether you’re using the review tab or the feedback tab. Review Tab Click to Enlarge Feedback Tab Click to Enlarge How to Use the Review Tab The review tab is the default view for Review 360 items. It’s where you interact with course content and watch videos. And the sidebar lists comments for the content that’s currently displayed on the screen. For Storyline and Studio courses, comments are tied to specific slides, so the comments you see in the sidebar change as you move from one slide to another. For Rise courses, comments are lesson-specific, so the comments in the sidebar change as you switch lessons. For video content, all comments display in the sidebar simultaneously, with the newest thread on top. To see a comment in context, click its hyperlinked timestamp to jump directly to that point in the video. Brilliant! Collapse and expand the comment sidebar by clicking the arrow in the upper right corner. Sometimes it’s helpful to collapse the sidebar to have more space to view the content, especially on small screens. Reviewers who sign in with an Articulate ID see helpful badges for unread comments. A blue dot appears next to individual unread comments in the sidebar, and a red badge with the total number of unread comments appears next to the feedback tab at the top of the screen. Mark comments as read by clicking them, replying to them, or using the More (•••) icon in the top right corner of the screen to Mark All as Read. How to Use the Feedback Tab The feedback tab lets you see all comments for a Review 360 item on one screen. Each thread has a screenshot to show you exactly how the content looked when the first comment was posted. These screenshots help you see feedback in context so you know what changes are needed. Click the screenshots to zoom in and out. Change how comments are sorted for Storyline, Studio, and Rise courses. Click the sorting icon in the upper right corner to toggle between slide/lesson order and chronological order. Tips: Video content always displays comments in chronological order, with the newest thread on top. Comments for deleted Storyline 360 slides display below a "Scene not found" section. Reviewers who sign in with an Articulate ID see helpful badges for unread comments. A blue dot appears next to individual unread comments, and a red badge with the total number of unread comments appears next to the feedback tab at the top of the screen. You can mark comments as read by clicking them, replying to them, or using the More (•••) icon in the top right corner of the screen to Mark All as Read. Post Comments All reviewers can add comments, emojis, @mentions, and attachments. The process is the same for both the review and feedback tabs. How to Post Comments It’s super-easy to comment on a Review 360 item. Place your cursor in a comment box or reply field, type your comment or paste text from your clipboard, then press Enter on your keyboard or click the Post button. If you change your mind, click Cancel. When you start a new discussion thread, a screenshot of the content as it currently appears is automatically generated and attached to your comment. If you’re watching a video, the screenshot is captured as soon as you start typing. You’ll see these screenshots on the feedback tab. Reviewers who subscribe to all comments will receive email notifications for new comments you post. And when you reply to an existing thread, you’ll see a list of reviewers who will be notified of your comment below the text-entry field. Tip: If you aren’t signed in to Review 360 with an Articulate ID, you’ll be prompted to enter your email address when you click inside a comment field. This allows you to receive notifications when other reviewers reply to your comments. (If you have an Articulate account, you’ll be prompted to enter your password.) How to Insert Emojis into Comments Give your comments more personality with emojis. If you’re using a device with an emoji keyboard, simply tap the emojis you want to add to your comments. Or, click the emoji icon in the comment field and select emojis from the list. How to Tag Other Reviewers in Comments Direct your comments to specific reviewers by tagging them. Here are two ways to tag people. Type @ followed by the person’s name or email address. A list of reviewers will appear as you type. Select the person you want to tag from the list. Click the @mention icon in the comment field and choose a reviewer from the list that appears. Who’s included in the @mention pick list? Great question! Everyone who has already commented on the current item appears on the list. And if you’re a member of an Articulate 360 Teams account, all your team members also appear in the list. How to Add Attachments to Comments Add attachments to comments to keep your team on the same page. Attach images, videos, audio tracks, and more! To add an attachment, click the paper clip icon in the comment field, then browse to the file you want to attach. To download an attachment, just click it and choose where you want to save it. To delete an attachment, hover over it and click the X that appears. (You can only delete attachments that you uploaded.) You can attach up to five files per comment. Learn more about attachments. Edit Comments All reviewers can edit their own comments. Here’s how. Hover over your comment, click the drop-down arrow that appears, and choose Edit. Change the text, emojis, @mentions, and attachments as needed. See above for details. Press the Enter key or click the Post button to save your changes. Tip: If you don’t see a drop-down arrow when you hover over your comments, you’ll need to sign in to Review 360 with your Articulate ID or click inside a comment/reply field and enter your email address when prompted. Delete Comments All reviewers can delete their own comments. Hover over the comment you want to delete, click the drop-down arrow that appears, and choose Delete. Here are some tips for deleting comments: While all reviewers can delete their own comments, the content owner can delete any comment by any reviewer. When you delete the first comment in a discussion thread, the entire thread gets deleted. You can't restore deleted comments. If you need to refer to a comment later, try resolving it rather than deleting it. If you don’t see a drop-down arrow when you hover over comments, you’ll need to sign in to Review 360 with your Articulate ID or click inside a comment/reply field and enter your email address when prompted. Resolve and Reopen Comments Avoid confusion by resolving comments that have been addressed or are no longer relevant. How to Resolve Comments All reviewers can resolve comments. It’s easy! Hover over an individual comment or the first comment in a discussion thread, then click the checkmark icon that appears. Depending on your settings, the comment or thread will disappear or fade into the background. Tip: If you don’t see a checkmark icon when you hover over comments, you'll need to sign in to Review 360 with your Articulate ID or click inside a comment/reply field and enter your email address when prompted. How to Show or Hide Resolved Comments By default, resolved comments disappear. To see resolved comments, click the More (•••) icon in the upper right corner of the screen and choose Show Resolved Comments. They’ll reappear with a faded or desaturated look so you can distinguish them from comments that are still open. To make resolved comments disappear again, click the More (•••) icon in the upper right corner and choose Hide Resolved Comments. The show/hide setting is specific to each Review 360 item, so you can show resolved comments in one item and hide them in another. Review 360 remembers your choice, so you don’t have to reset it every time you open an item. How to Reopen Comments Sometimes you need to reopen a comment or discussion that was previously resolved. No problem! First, show resolved comments as described above, then hover over the comment and click the green check mark icon that appears. Export Comments to CSV and PDF Files Export comments from a Review 360 item for analysis, backup, or regulatory requirements. Here’s how. First, make sure you’re signed in to Review 360 with an Articulate ID. Then, click the More (•••) icon in the upper right corner of the screen and choose Export Comments. Use the Comment Order drop-down list to choose how you want to organize comments in your report. Choose either CSV or PDF from the Export Format drop-down list. Click Export and choose where you want to save your report. All comments for all versions of the Review 360 item get exported to a single report. However, to include resolved comments in the PDF export, set the item to Show Resolved Comments first via the More (•••) icon in the upper right corner before exporting. Disable and Re-Enable Comments Only the content owner can turn off comments. Here’s what happens when comments are disabled: The sidebar disappears from the review tab, and the feedback tab disappears altogether. If the review item already had comments, you won’t be able to read them unless you export them to a report. If the content owner enables comments again, all pre-existing comments will reappear. (Re-enable comments by clicking the More (•••) icon in the upper right corner and choosing Enable Comments.)
