Introducing Quick Share: One-Click Publishing for Everyday Learning
We’re excited to share a brand-new way to get your Rise content out into the world: Quick Share! What Is Quick Share? Quick Share lets you publish Rise courses instantly and share them with a simple link, no LMS setup, no logins, no admin delays. You’ll also get light analytics so you can see how many people viewed your course (and, with the Guestbook enabled, who those learners are). It’s all about speed and simplicity, helping learners get the right information at the right time without barriers. When to Use Quick Share Quick Share is perfect for everyday learning content that needs to move fast: Job aids and quick reference materials Presentations or meeting resources Explainer modules and how-tos Operational updates or announcements Pre-boarding and onboarding refreshers It’s also a great way to share examples right here in the E-Learning Heroes community. It’s a fast way to showcase your creativity, get feedback, and inspire fellow creators. If you need deeper, learner-level analytics or advanced group management, that’s where Reach or your LMS comes in. Quick Share can live alongside those tools to give you flexibility. 🎥 Tip Video: Deploy Content Rapidly with Quick Share Community Use Cases We love seeing how community members are already using Quick Share: BradDameron uses it to share preview links and resources across departments. “The Guestbook gives us a general view of engagement — perfect for quick stakeholder visibility,” he shared. JeremyNash uses Quick Share to deliver client-specific training without needing an LMS: “It’s a great step between Preview and Review.” JessicaDecker found it helpful for external partners: “We need to share training with outside vendors who don’t have LMS access. The Guestbook is nice so we can still track who’s taken it.” Try It Out! Quick Share is automatically available for all Articulate 360 creators, no setup required and no extra cost. 💬 Have you tried Quick Share yet? How are you using it? Share your experiences (and any creative use cases) in the comments below!Storyline 360 Pros — What’s Your Favorite “Hidden Gem”? 💎
As someone who’s spent a lot of time working with (and on!) Storyline 360, I’ve come to appreciate the power in the little things — those lesser-known features that quietly make our lives easier. Here's one of my personal favorites: 🎧📽️ Cue Points with the “C” Key: I recently spoke with a customer who struggled to time trigger actions to audio and video media on their slides. They would preview the slide, make note of when a trigger should be fired, then return to slide authoring view to add a cue point to the timeline to tie into the trigger event. This would require a lot of manual back-and-forth between authoring and previewing. I often have to do the same thing, and there is an easier way. If you use stage preview (accessible via the "Play" icon" in the lower-left corner of the Timeline panel), Storyline will stay in the slide authoring view and play the timeline of the slide, including any audio or video media that's present. As it plays, you can press the "C" key on your keyboard to have cue points added to the current playback position. It’s a simple way to place cue points in real time, right where they’re needed — perfect for syncing trigger actions to specific moments in your media. cting Storyline 360's UI and using the "C" key to drop cue points on the timeline. Now I’m curious: What’s your favorite under-the-radar Storyline feature? Something small, subtle, maybe even a little obscure — but that you personally couldn’t live without. Drop it in the comments — I’d love to learn what little gems you rely on. 👇Teaser: Storyline "Chat To Animation"
🚀 Big things are coming to Storyline 360. Last month at the Articuland Summit in Boston, our COO Brian Gil gave a sneak peek at something our team’s been quietly working on: AI-powered animations inside Storyline. We've been calling this feature "chat to animation" internally. The idea is simple but powerful: talk to Storyline's AI Assistant about how you want your slide to animate, and it helps bring your vision to life. The attached video shows a little preview of this feature in a fun "Feline Overlord" themed Storyline course. 🐱👇 On the first slide, I entered this prompt into the AI Assistant chat: “Can you suggest an animation scheme for this slide?” It broke down the suggested animation effects for each object, then asked if I want to create a trigger for them. After responding, "yes", the AI Assistant wrote the JavaScript code to create the animations and automatically associated it with the "When timeline starts" event. It also surfaced a "Preview" button that jumps into Storyline's preview mode so I could see the animation in action. Notice that the AI Assistant window stays visible during preview. This means I can refine the animation while previewing to home in on the exact look and feel I want. In this case, I wanted to delay the slight "pulse" of the yellow next arrow to begin after the image and text animations completed, so I entered: “Great! Can you delay the animation on the next arrow a bit so that it starts after the other objects have animated in?” The AI revised the JavaScript in the trigger and immediately replayed the slide again so I could see the change and tweak further if needed. That ability to preview, refine, and replay instantly is what makes this experience feel so magical. If you'd like to see the published course in action, you can find it on Review 360: Chat To Animation Teaser | Review 360 This feature should land in private beta soon, and we'd love to get your feedback. If you want to help shape how this evolves, email beta@articulate.com to get started!Behind the Scenes: Storyline’s Move to Modern .NET
We just wrapped a project that’s been hanging over Storyline for a long time: Moving from .NET Framework 4.8 to modern .NET (now .NET 10). This one goes deeper than it might sound. Back when Storyline was first built, choosing .NET Framework was the obvious call. This was 2010-ish. Windows dominated our space, and the .NET ecosystem gave us a lot of what we needed to move fast and build a really capable tool. That decision worked. For a long time. It also shaped some of the realities of the product today. Questions about platform support come up a lot, and early architectural choices like this are a big part of that story. They helped us move fast early on, but they also made certain paths more complex later. Fast forward to now… Microsoft has effectively stopped evolving .NET Framework and put their energy into modern .NET. Meanwhile, we were still running on a foundation that wasn’t keeping pace with where things were going. So we made the call to move. This wasn’t a simple upgrade. We relied on parts of .NET Framework that don’t exist anymore. AppDomains. Binary serialization. A handful of “seemed like a great idea at the time” features that modern .NET intentionally left behind. We had to rethink and rebuild some pretty fundamental parts of the product. So what did all of this actually get us? We’re now on a modern, actively supported runtime. It’s easier for us to keep improving performance, adopt new capabilities, and evolve the platform without constantly working around legacy constraints. We also retired some very old pieces of the system along the way, which… felt pretty great 😅 And then there's performance. Microsoft has invested heavily at performance improvements in modern .NET, and we're seeing that surface in Storyline. We ran benchmarks across 18 Storyline projects, measuring open, save, and publish times. Every single project got faster with improvements ranging from 0.4% to nearly 30%. The larger the project, the larger the improvement. In the animated gif below, I put .NET Framework (left) head-to-head with modern .NET publishing the same course. Neither project was pre-published to warm the cache, and I even gave .NET Framework a slight head start by clicking Publish there first. The gif is sped up for easier viewing, but the result is real: modern .NET finishes publishing well before .NET Framework. Big credit to the team that pulled this off. This was deep, risky work in some of the most critical parts of the product. Curious to hear from folks here: If you're on the latest Storyline 360, have you noticed any performance improvements when opening, saving, or publishing your projects?Storyline's Release Cadence
For almost ten years, Storyline 360 has shipped on a pretty steady rhythm: about every four weeks, usually lining up to one update per calendar month. It’s been reliable and predictable… but also a little slow for where we’re headed. So we’re changing that. Starting soon, we’ll be shipping more frequent Storyline 360 updates. Smaller releases, delivered more often, so new features and fixes get into your hands faster. Why the shift? Honestly, it comes down to value and momentum. When the team builds something useful, we don’t want it waiting in a queue for weeks before you can benefit from it. And with the pace of AI innovation across Articulate 360, our release schedule needs to match the speed at which we’re developing new capabilities. We’re also streamlining a lot of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into each release. The goal is simple: making shipping so routine for us so it can be a steady stream of improvements for you. We’ll learn and adjust as we go, but I’m excited about what this unlocks. Faster fixes, faster features, and a faster feedback loop with the talented people who rely on Storyline every day. Looking forward to sharing updates with you… well, more often.Meet Your New Teammate: First Impressions of Articulate’s AI Assistant
Introduction: Why AI Built for eLearning Changes Everything AI is everywhere these days — from writing emails to generating images, creating videos, and more. We all know tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, DALL·E, Grammarly, Synthesia, and plenty more. They’ve quickly become part of our daily workflows — or at least, they have in mine! But if you’ve ever tried using these tools to help build an eLearning course, you’ve probably noticed something… They’re smart — but they don’t really get what we do. That’s why I was both excited and curious when I heard that Articulate was introducing an AI Assistant, built right into Storyline and Rise. Finally, an AI tool designed specifically for instructional designers and eLearning developers. I’ve been working with Articulate tools for over 14 years, and like many of you, I’m always looking for ways to speed up my workflow without sacrificing creativity or quality. So the big question was: Could this AI Assistant actually help me design or improve my courses — in a way that generic AI tools can’t? Spoiler alert: It can. And it did. This is the first post in a series where I’ll share how Articulate’s AI Assistant is changing the way I approach course development — making everyday tasks faster, smoother, and honestly, a bit more fun. So let’s take a closer look at why having AI built specifically for eLearning really makes a difference. Why Use Articulate’s AI Assistant Instead of Other AI Tools? Like many of you, I’ve used my fair share of AI tools — from ChatGPT for brainstorming to DALL·E for generating creative visuals. These tools are great, but they’re generalists. They don’t know (or care) that I’m building an eLearning course. That’s where Articulate’s AI Assistant stands out. It’s designed inside Articulate Storyline and Rise, for people like us — instructional designers, eLearning developers, and content creators. No copy-pasting between tools, no explaining to a chatbot what a "learning objective" is every single time. Here’s why I immediately saw the benefit of having AI built right into the tools I already use: It understands context. You’re not starting from scratch with every prompt. The AI Assistant knows you’re working within slides, quizzes, scenarios, and learning objectives. It fits seamlessly into your workflow. No need to bounce between apps or worry about formatting. You stay in Storyline or Rise, focused on creating — and the AI is right there when you need a boost. It’s tailored for eLearning tasks. Whether you’re drafting instructional text, generating quiz questions, or adjusting tone for different audiences, it’s built to support tasks we handle every day. Other AI tools are powerful, but they weren’t made for eLearning. Articulate’s AI Assistant feels like it was built by people who understand the little challenges that come with designing courses — and that makes all the difference. What Impressed Me Right Away I went in with low expectations — I mean, AI is cool, but it’s not magic, right? Well, after just a few prompts, I found myself genuinely impressed. Articulate’s AI Assistant is fast and simple. No manuals, no guesswork. You type, it helps. It felt less like learning a new feature and more like having a colleague nearby to bounce ideas off. Articulate’s AI Assistant gets you moving. The hardest part of creating content is often just getting started. The AI Assistant hands you a decent draft so you’re not stuck wondering how to begin. From there, it’s all about tweaking. Articulate’s AI Assistant understands eLearning. This isn’t some generic writing tool — it gets that you’re creating learning content. Whether it’s suggesting learning objectives or drafting quiz questions, it speaks the language of eLearning. By the end of my first session, I realized this tool isn’t just about saving time — it’s about keeping me in that productive flow state. Less overthinking, more doing. Wrapping Up — And What’s Next After just a short time using Articulate’s AI Assistant, I knew it was going to be part of my daily routine. It’s not here to replace creativity — it’s here to remove those little hurdles that can slow us down. No more blank slides. No more overthinking simple tasks. And the best part? I’m only scratching the surface. In my next post, I’ll show you how I’m using the AI Assistant to speed up writing — from slide content to quizzes and even branching scenarios. That’s where things get really interesting. Have you given the AI Assistant a try yet? I’d love to hear how it’s working for you — or if you're still wondering how to fit it into your workflow. Drop a comment below and let’s share ideas! Stay tuned — more AI-powered tips coming soon! About me: Paul Alders LinkedIn Profile The eLearning Brewery
