Upcoming Articulate 360 Training Webinars
Stay ahead of the curve with our free Articulate 360 Training webinars. These weekly sessions are designed to help busy course creators like you enhance your e-learning skills without investing too much time. As an Articulate 360 subscriber, you can grow your expertise through targeted training on the latest techniques and best practices – all at no additional cost. And if you want to view some on-demand training to view at your own time, visit the Articulate 360 training site to see what's available. Check out our upcoming webinars and level up your e-learning game. If you can't attend, that's OK. We record all of the sessions, so just sign up and you'll get a recording emailed to you. Date Title November 19, 2024 ✨ Overview of AI Assistant in Rise November 19, 2024 ✨ Overview of AI Assistant in Storyline November 19, 2024 Jumpstart Your Course Development in Rise 360 November 19, 2024 Create Interactive Video Quizzes with Storyline 360 December 3, 2024 ✨ Overview of AI Assistant in Storyline December 3, 2024 ✨ Beyond Click-and-Read: Crafting Engaging E-Learning with AI Assistant December 3, 2024 How to Build Accordion Interactions in Storyline 360 December 3, 2024 Create Engaging Software Training in Rise 360 December 10, 2024 ✨ Overview of AI Assistant in Rise December 10, 2024 Tips and Tricks for Success Using Reach 360 December 10, 2024 Image Editing and Special Effects in Storyline 360 December 17, 2024 ✨ Overview of AI Assistant in Storyline December 17, 2024 ✨ AI Assistant & Rise: Smart Strategies for Efficient E-Learning December 17, 2024 Using Dials to Create Menu Navigation in Storyline 360 December 17, 2024 How to Build Compliance Training in Rise 360 Not yet an Articulate 360 subscriber? Sign up for a 30-day free trial and check out as many as you’d like. And if the live webinar time doesn’t work for you, no worries! Simply sign up anyway and you’ll receive the recording in your inbox so you can watch it whenever you have time. Hope to see you at one of our upcoming webinars!Storyline 360: Using Team Slides for Collaboration
Make collaboration easy for your team. Create a library of shared team slides that everyone can access right from Storyline 360. Upload branded project templates, share slides that need to be in every course, and give teammates access to reusable slide content. In this user guide, you’ll learn how to share and manage team slides and insert theminto Storyline courses. Team slides are exclusively available to Articulate 360 Teams. Not a teams subscriber? Contact an Articulate 360sales representative to learn more. Note: Team slides aren’t meant for storing all your Storyline projects. Explore our cloud backup feature to safely back up your courses. Sharing Slides with Your Team Understanding Team Slides Permissions Managing Team Slides Browsing Team Slides and Inserting Them into Courses Sharing Slides with Your Team Here’s how to share slides with your team and update them as needed. Open a Storyline project and choose the slides you want to share or update. If you’re sharing the entire project file, you don’t need to select anything. To share a scene, select it in Story View or open it in Slide View. To share specific slides, Ctrl+click or Shift+click the ones you want to share. Go to the Slides tab on the Storyline ribbon, click the Team Slides drop-down arrow, and choose one of these options: Share Project Share This Scene Share Selected Slide(s) When the Add Team Slides dialog appears, choose to Create a new project or Replace an existing project. You can only replace slides that you shared. You can’t replace slides shared by other team members. Learn more about permissions. When you create a new project, you can upload it to a specific folder. Just select one from the Folder list. If you want to create a new folder that’s not in the list, type a name in the Folder field. If you don’t select a folder, your project will appear in the All Projectscontainer in the team slides browser, and you can move it to a folderlater. When you replace an existing project, you can’t select a folder. The project simply remains in its current folder. Click Add to complete the process. Managing Team Slides Use the team slides browser to manage your shared slides, including organizing projects in folders, renaming and deleting projects and folders, and restoring deleted projects. To open the team slides browser, go to the Slides tab on the Storyline ribbon and click the top half of the Team Slides button. Seethe following table for details on managing team slides. Creating Folders: Click the folder icon in the lower left corner of the Team Slides browser, then enter a name for the new folder. The folder list will automatically refresh to insert your new folder in the correct alphabetical order. Organizing Projects in Folders: Use the View drop-down list at the top of the window to switch to Projects view, then simply drag and drop projects onto folders. You can’t move individual slides from a project to different folders. The entire project will moveall at once. Renaming Folders: There are two ways to rename a folder: Right-click the folder and choose Rename. Hover over the folder, click the vertical dots that appear, and choose Rename. Then type a new name and press Enter on your keyboard. Deleting Folders: You can delete a folder if it’s empty or if you created all the projects in it. (If you need to delete a folder that contains other team members’ projects, move the projects to another location, then delete the folder.) There are three ways to delete a folder: Select the folder and press Delete on your keyboard. Right-click the folder and choose Delete. Hover over the folder, click the vertical dots that appear, and choose Delete. When you delete a folder, all the projects in it get moved to the Deleted Items container at the bottom of the folders list. Renaming Projects: Use the View drop-down list at the top of the window to switch to Projects view, then do either of the following: Right-click the project and choose Rename. Hover over the project, click the vertical dots that appear, and choose Rename. Then type a new name and press Enter on your keyboard. Deleting Projects: You can only delete projects you created. (If you're an admin with a user seat, you can delete any project.) Use the View drop-down list at the top of the window to switch to Projects view, then do any of the following: Select the project and press Delete on your keyboard. Drag and drop the project onto the Deleted Items container. Right-click the project and choose Delete. Hover over the project, click the vertical dots that appear, and choose Delete. When you delete a project, it moves to the Deleted Items container at the bottom of the folders list. To delete a project from Deleted Items, do any of the following: Select the project and press Delete on your keyboard. Right-click the project and choose Permanently delete. Hover over the project, click the vertical dots that appear, and choose Permanently delete. To permanently delete all your projects from Deleted Items at the same time, right-click the container and choose Empty. (You only have access to your deleted projects, so emptying the container won’t delete other team members’ projects.) Restoring Deleted Projects: You can only restore your own deleted projects. (If you're an admin with a user seat, you can restore any project.) Click Deleted Items at the bottom of the folders list, then do any of the following: Drag and drop a deleted project onto a folder. Right-click a project and choose Restore to <folder name>. Hover over a project, click the vertical dots that appear, and choose Restore to <folder name>. Understanding Team Slides Permissions All team members can do some tasks while only the original content owner can do others. And adminswho have been assigned to a user seat can manage projects for the whole team. Here’s the breakdown of tasks and permissions. Task All Users Content Owners Admins Share slides with the team x x x Create folders in the team slides browser x x x Move projects to different folders x x x Rename folders and projects x x x Delete empty folders x x x Delete a folder that contains only projects you created x x Delete any folder x Replace a project that you created with updated slides x x Delete a project that you created x x Delete any project x Restore a project that you deleted x x Restore any project x Pro Tip: When users are removed from the team, their shared slides remain available for the team to browse, download, rename, and organize in folders. Admins with a user seat can also delete and restore them as needed. Browsing Team Slides and Inserting Them into Courses Opening the Team Slides Browser: To start a brand new Storyline project from the team slides browser, just launch Storyline and click Team Slides on the start screen. Your new project will inherit the content, slide size, and player settings from the team slides you choose (see below). To import team slides into an existing Storyline project, go to the Slides tab on the ribbon, and click the top half of the Team Slides button to launch the team slides browser. Browsing Team Slides: Use the following image and numbered list to learn about each feature of the team slides browser. Click the image above to see a larger version. # Feature Description 1 Search Field Quickly find projects and slides by entering a title or author in the search field. The results will automatically refresh as you type. 2 View Selector Switch between project view and slide view. Project view is the default. It displays a thumbnail image of the first slide in each project along with the title and number of slides included. Slide view is split into sections. Each section represents a project, and a thumbnail image for each slide in the project is displayed. If you only need to insert some of the slides from a project, switch to slide view so you can select just the ones you need. Tip: When you create a new course by clicking Team Slides on the Storyline start screen, you won’t see the View selector. You can only browse team slides in project view. 3 Sort Order Change the sort order of projects. The default order shows the newest projects first, the oldest last. You can switch to alphabetical order or show the projects you most recently used. 4 Folders Organize projects in folders. The left side of the browser lists (in alphabetical order) all the folders your team has created. At the beginning of your subscription, your team won’t have any folders. You’ll just see containers for All Projects and Deleted Items. But all team members can add folders by clicking the folder icon in the lower left corner. See aboveto learn all about managing folders and projects for your team. 5 Projects and Slides Browse your team’s projects and slides. Thumbnail images represent projects or slides, depending on the current view. Zoom the thumbnails in and out using the zoom slider in the lower left corner or by holding down Ctrl on your keyboard as you scroll your mouse wheel. 6 Details Pane Find details for the selected project or slide on the right side of the browser. In project view, you’ll see the project title, its author, when it was last updated, the number of slides it has, and its slide dimensions. If you’re in the All Projects list, the details pane will also display the folder in which the project is located (if applicable), and you can click the folder name to jump directly to that folder. In slide view, you’ll see the slide title, its author, when it was last updated, and its dimensions. 7 Insert Slides Button Insert the selected project or slides into your Storyline course by clicking the Insert Slides button in the lower right corner. Inserting Team Slides into a Storyline Course: When you find the team slides you want to use in your Storyline course, select them and click the Insert Slides button in the lower right corner of the browser. In project view, you can only select one project at a time, but all the slides in the project get inserted into your course. In slide view, you can select as many slides as you want. Just hold down the Ctrl key or Shift key as you click slide thumbnails.Storyline 360: Working with Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks are a great way to add interactivity to your courses. They let learners jump directly to the content they need. Hyperlinking to a Web Page Hyperlinking to a File Hyperlinking to Another Part of the Course Hyperlinking to an Email Address Changing the Color of Hyperlinked Text Editing a Hyperlink Previewing Courses with Hyperlinks Making Hyperlinks Accessible Hyperlinking to a Web Page To add a hyperlink that opens a web page, select the item you want to be clickable, then do any of the following: Press Ctrl+K. Go to the Insert tab on the Storyline ribbon and click Hyperlink. If you’re adding a hyperlink to text, you can also right-click the text and choose Hyperlink. When the Trigger Wizard appears, set the following properties for your hyperlink and click OK. Action Select Open URL/file. File or URL Enter the full URL of the destination web page. If you want to make sure your link works properly, hover over the URL you entered and click the check mark icon. It'll launch the URL in your default browser. Browser Options Hover over the URL you entered and click thegear icon to customize the browser options for the window that’ll launch your hyperlinked content, including window location, browser controls, and window size. Click Save when you’re finished making selections. When Select the event that’ll activate your hyperlink, such as User clicks. Text For text hyperlinks, this field will already be populated with the text you selected, but you can change the text here if you'd like. For hyperlinks on other items (pictures, shapes, characters, etc.), this field won’t be displayed. Object This field won't be displayed for text hyperlinks. If you're adding a hyperlink to an object (picture, shape, character, etc.), that object will already be selected, but you can choose a different one if necessary. Hyperlinking to a File The best option for hyperlinking to a file is to upload the file to a web server, then link to its URL using the method above. Another option is to embed the file in your published output. Select the item you want to be clickable, then do any of the following: Press Ctrl+K. Go to the Insert tab on the Storyline ribbon and click Hyperlink. If you’re adding a hyperlink to text, you can also right-click the text and choose Hyperlink. When the Trigger Wizard appears, set the following properties for your hyperlink and click OK. Action Select Open URL/File. File or URL Click the ellipsis (...) button, browse to the file you want to attach, and click Open. Whenyou link to a file in this manner,you can hover over the file path and click the check mark iconto open the folder where your file is located. Browser Options Hover over the file path and click the gear icon to customize the browser options for the window that’ll launch your hyperlinked content, including window location, browser controls, and window size. Click Save when you’re finished making selections. When Select the event that’ll activate your hyperlink, such as User clicks. Text For text hyperlinks, this field will already be populated with the text you selected, but you can change the text here if you'd like. For hyperlinks on other items (pictures, shapes, characters, etc.), this field won’t be displayed. Object This field won't be displayed for text hyperlinks. If you're adding a hyperlink to an object (picture, shape, character, etc.), that object will already be selected, but you can choose a different one if necessary. Tips for working with file hyperlinks: Storyline will place a copy of each hyperlinked file in your published output. All hyperlinked files for a course will be stored in the published folder called story_content/external files . Depending on the type of file you’re attaching and learners' security settings, the file may simply open when clicked, or learners may be prompted to save it first. To attach files to a course and make them accessible on all slides, attach them as player resources instead. Hyperlinking to Another Part of the Course To link to another scene, slide, or layer in the same course, select the item you want to make clickable, then do any of the following: Press Ctrl+K. Go to the Insert tab on the ribbon and click Hyperlink. If you're adding a hyperlink to text, you can also right-click the text and choose Hyperlink. When the Trigger Wizard appears, set the following properties for your hyperlink and click OK. Action Choose one of these actions: Jump to scene: Use this action to link to another scene in your course. Jump to slide: Use this action to link to another slide in your course. Show layer: Use this action to open a layer on the same slide. Lightbox slide: Use this action to open a slide in a lightbox while the rest of your course dims behind it. Scene/Slide/Layer Choose the scene, slide, or layer to which you want to hyperlink. When Select the event that’ll activate your hyperlink, such as User clicks. Text For text hyperlinks, this field will already be populated with the text you selected, but you can change the text here if you'd like. For hyperlinks on other items (pictures, shapes, characters, etc.), this field won’t be displayed. Object This field won't be displayed for text hyperlinks. If you're adding a hyperlink to an object (picture, shape, character, etc.), that object will already be selected, but you can choose a different one if necessary. Hyperlinking to an Email Address To add a hyperlink that opens a new mail message to a specific email address, select the item you want to be clickable, then do any of the following: Press Ctrl+K. Go to the Insert tab on the Storyline ribbon and click Hyperlink. If you’re adding a hyperlink to text, you can also right-click the text and choose Hyperlink. When the Trigger Wizard appears, set the following properties for your hyperlink and click OK. Action Select Send email. Email Type the recipient’s email address. (See below for optional parameters.) When Select the event that’ll activate your hyperlink, such as User clicks. Text For text hyperlinks, this field will already be populated with the text you selected, but you can change the text here if you'd like. For hyperlinks on other items (pictures, shapes, characters, etc.), this field won’t be displayed. Object This field won't be displayed for text hyperlinks. If you're adding a hyperlink to an object (picture, shape, character, etc.), that object will already be selected, but you can choose a different one if necessary. Optional parameters for email links: Email links can include additional parameters, such as: Multiple Email Addresses Separate multiple email addresses with commas (but no spaces). Subject Line To add a subject line, type ?subject= immediately after the email address followed by the text of the subject line. Don’t use spaces. Replace spaces with %20. Body Text To add default text to the body of the email, type &body= immediately after the subject line followed by the body text you want to use. Don’t use spaces or line breaks. Replace spaces with %20 and line breaks with %0D%0A. Here's an example of an email link with a subject line and some default body text: Changing the Color of Hyperlinked Text By default, when you add a hyperlink to text, the text color changes and an underline appears. The hyperlink color comes from your theme colors. Here's how to change it: In Slide View, go to the Design tab on the Storyline ribbon and click Colors. The theme colors you're currently using will be marked by a thin orange outline. If you're using a custom theme, right-click it and choose Edit. If you're using a built-In theme, choose Create New Theme Colors (since built-in colors can't be edited). When the color editor opens, change the Hyperlink color to the color of your choice. To learn more about editing theme colors, see this user guide. Click Save to close the color editor. (If you're creating new theme colors, enter a name for the new theme when prompted.) Customizing Hyperlink States Want to customize the hover, active, and visited states for your hyperlinks with different colors and decorations? As of November 17, 2020, you can do just that! Learn more about formatting hyperlink states. Editing a Hyperlink To edit a hyperlink that you applied to text, place your cursor somewhere in the hyperlinked text, then do any of the following: Press Ctrl+K. Double-click the trigger in the Triggers panel. Go to the Insert tab on the Storyline ribbon and click Hyperlink. Right-click and select Edit Hyperlink. To edit a hyperlink that you applied to anything other than text, select the object and do either of the following: Press Ctrl+K. Double-click the trigger in the Triggers panel. Go to the Insert tab on the Storyline ribbon and click Hyperlink. When the Trigger Wizard appears, modify any of the settings and click OK. Previewing Courses with Hyperlinks When you preview a course, you may find that hyperlinks don't work as expected. To properly test hyperlinks, you'll need to publish your course. Making Hyperlinks Accessible With a few design tweaks, you can ensure that all learners can easily navigate hyperlinks. Here are some ways to boost hyperlink accessibility: Use descriptive links. Learners should be able to understand a link’s purpose without reading the surrounding content. Communicate the purpose of a hyperlink and its destination directly in the linked text. Instead of vague phrases like "Click here" or “Read more”, be specific with something like "Read our policy statement." (2.4.4 Link Purpose [In Context]) Ensure keyboard navigation. Hyperlinks should be easily accessible and operable in a logical order when using the keyboard. In Storyline 360, text publishes with the proper semantic formatting for links and other elements so all learners can explore content effortlessly. (2.1.1 Keyboard) Choose visible focus indicator colors. Keyboard users need to be able to see selected objects easily. A clear focus indicator helps learners navigating with a keyboard know where they are on the page. In Storyline 360, you can customize the accessible focus indicator with two colors. Using the two-color focus indicator with sufficient color contrast helps learners see the focus rectangle on dark and light backgrounds. (2.4.7 Focus Visible and 1.4.3 Contrast [Minimum]) Add alternative (alt) text for image hyperlinks. When an image is the only content of a hyperlink, use alt text to describe its purpose. For example, tell learners that clicking the magnifying glass icon activates the search function or that selecting the print icon opens the browser’s Print window. (1.1.1 Non-text Content and 3.2.4 Consistent Identification) Indicate if a hyperlink opens in a new browser tab or window. In the linked text, let learners know if the content will open in a new browser tab or window so they’re not disoriented. (3.2.1 On Focus) Don’t depend on color alone. Your hyperlinks should have sufficient color contrast, underlined linked text, and clear instructions for images with links so learners know they are interactive. (1.4.1 Use of Color and 1.4.3 Contrast [Minimum]) Avoid redundant links. A hyperlink is redundant if it’s next to another hyperlink that goes to the same destination. That results in unnecessary announcements for screen reader users and repetitive navigation for keyboard users. Combining redundant links into one hyperlink creates a smoother navigation experience for all learners. You Might Also Want to Explore: Working with TriggersEngineering Journal: Storyline Quality Update Q3 2024
Published on October 25, 2024 Hello E-Learning Heroes community members! I’m Jason Famularo, a Senior Software Engineer on the Storyline 360 team. One of my responsibilities is improving the quality of the Storyline 360 application, and that’s perfect because I’m here to give the Q3 Storyline quality update. This month, I’d like to spotlight the team’s quality process, which we use to validate new versions of Storyline 360 before they are released. As always, we’ll also review our quarterly Quality Metrics. Spotlight on Storyline 360 Quality Procedures Before we dive in, let’s ask, “What exactly is quality?” To quote the IEEE, “Software quality is a complex topic,” but in short, it describes the “reliability, usability, performance, and security” of a software application. All software teams want their products to function correctly, be easy to use, perform well, and certainly be secure. If a team doesn’t have a quality process defined, low-quality software will result. When I started here at Articulate, my manager, Jesse Taber, told me that “everyone owns quality.” This is a crucial mantra, because the focus on quality happens during each step of the process as a feature is designed, implemented, changed, tested, and maintained. So how do we ensure high-quality software on the Storyline 360 team? Storyline 360 Quality Process Overview The team’s quality process includes the following steps: Automated testing during development Acceptance testing when a feature is complete or updated or a bug is fixed (aka QA) Daily internal build testing and validation Weekly private beta releases Final release validation Post-release monitoring Let’s look at each step in more detail! Automated Testing Storyline 360 utilizes two different automated testing strategies: unit testing and integration testing. Unit testing is additional code that tests small, individual components of the application. This very powerful tool alerts software engineers when a small, seemingly unrelated change introduces a bug. Articulate has over 15,000 unit tests! While that sounds like a lot, each one runs in a fraction of a second, so the total time needed is just ten to fifteen minutes. Unit tests cover a wide gamut of functionality in Storyline 360, such as creating, opening, and saving project files, adding and editing content in the project, publishing courses, and creating course output. Integration testing is a layer above unit testing. This style of testing is focused on testing modules and components with each other. This ensures that the application as a whole works well with itself. A change in one module might have a downstream impact on others. For example, the new AI Assistant features in Storyline introduced an AI Assistant side panel. Our integration tests can catch an issue where the new AI Assistant side panel might introduce a bug with the Triggers or Comments panel, which we might have otherwise overlooked. Before a software engineer’s changes can be permanently added into the codebase, all unit tests must pass. Depending on the complexity of the change, we may also run integration tests at this time. If we don’t run them here, they always run at least once daily due to how long they take to complete. Acceptance Testing Along with our automated tests, we use acceptance testing. Before a software engineer delivers their work, they write specific steps that cover how their work should be tested, including both obvious and not-so-obvious ways the code may break. This will also cover the steps they took to test the code and any other areas that should be retested as a result. The software engineer then assigns their changes to another engineer for code review and testing. QA engineers monitor each change as well and assess the need for additional testing. For higher-risk changes, a QA engineer is assigned to do additional testing to mitigate that risk. The assigned engineers execute the test steps written by the authoring engineer and also perform additional testing they deem necessary. Edge cases are exercised at this time, and the tester attempts to use the feature in every way possible: with just a mouse and with just a keyboard, in various languages, undoing and redoing, using alternate avenues of accessing features—such as right-clicking—and just generally trying to find scenarios the author may have missed in their testing. The tester documents how they exercised the functionality. If issues are found, the authoring engineer fixes them, and the process repeats. Once the changes are tested satisfactorily, they are merged into the codebase. Once this is done, integration tests are run automatically. If anything fails, the engineer determines why and provides fixes immediately. A majority of bugs and issues are found during this stage. Internal Testing Once a day, usually overnight, a new version is created and given to Articulate employees for early access and testing. Other teams use these internal builds to access unreleased features and verify bug fixes. Other companies may call this process alpha testing or dogfooding, and while we love creatures with paws here at Articulate, we just call it internal testing. Any crashes that happen in this version are logged and sent to the Storyline 360 team, where a software and QA engineer review and determine the course of action to take. We’ll usually reach out to our coworkers who experienced the crash and gather more information. Private Beta In addition to internal testing, we have a private beta for customers like you! We release new builds weekly after testing has been completed and we are confident that the beta version is stable. Private beta releases don't get as much internal scrutiny as major releases, so bugs or other issues may surface—if you do find an issue, you’ll have a direct line to the engineering team (or, more accurately, we will have a direct line to you and will be in touch if you run into issues or crashes). We actively monitor feedback and telemetry data from the private beta to ensure the upcoming release behaves as expected. If you are interested in participating in the private beta, please email us atbeta@articulate.com. We receive great feedback from our users who are in the beta and are truly thankful for their efforts in helping us make a better product for everyone! Final Release Candidate Validation Storyline 360 has an ideal release cadence of once a month (sometimes it’s five or six weeks). The final week of the release cycle is called Overview Week and consists of a team-wide effort to find and stamp out any remaining issues. We create a release candidate build 7 to 10 days before we release it to users and use that for the Overview Week testing. The first step of Overview Week is reviewing all the code changes included in the next release. Three senior engineers tackle this task and identify risky changes that require additional testing or focus. Once the week begins, all changes made to the release are subject to a full regression test. The development team divvies up new features and bug fixes, and they retest each change again to find anything missed the first time and to ensure that it works with all the other changes in the release. While that happens, the QA team does end-to-end testing of all new features along with testing the output of published courses to ensure the new changes don’t break existing functionality. We maintain a list of key features and tricky scenarios and retest them in various web browsers. As the week goes on, the team creates courses that mimic features our customers use to create their amazing courses. For example, tabs interactions are a popular way for course authors to create dynamic and compelling content, and we make a course featuring tabs to ensure things are still working. Background audio, a way to give your course a soundtrack, is another example of a popular feature we exercise during our Overview Week. If an issue is found at any point, software and QA engineers review, resolve, and retest them. The final release usually happens on a Tuesday morning (in the United States). Post-Release Monitoring About 15% of Storyline 360 active users install a new release within the first week of its availability. By the end of the second week, about 30% of active users have installed the update. If there are any major issues in a release, we typically find them in the first two weeks, before the majority of users have adopted the release. The support and QA teams monitor incoming bug reports and work quickly to determine the cause and plot a course of action. The QA engineers also monitor the feedback users leave when they downgrade to a previous version of Storyline 360. This feedback often contains insight about new issues and helps us expedite fixes. Software engineers monitor telemetry data, and the support team monitors support cases and forums. If anything looks problematic, we address it as soon as possible. If the issue is particularly gnarly, we do a service release, which is a new release with critical bug fixes. Summary The Storyline 360 team follows a multistep process for each release to ensure product quality. We know it’s frustrating when issues creep into the release, so we are constantly working to improve our methodologies and to catch things as soon as possible. Quality Metrics Let’s review our quarterly quality metrics! Application Error Rate The application error rate measures how often Storyline 360 displays the “Articulate Storyline Error Report” dialog. We track this data for both Storyline 360 sessions—or unique instances of opening and then later closing Storyline 360—and users. Our goal is to get this metric under 1% for both. The application error rate for Storyline sessions has been hovering around 1.15% for the past six months and has continued to hold steady. Storyline 360’s application error rate per session for updates 84 through 90. The graph below tracks the percentage of users who encounter an error in a release. When Jesse first reported the application error rate by user for update 84 last year it was around10%, but has since risen to closer to 20%. While the session application error rate tends to stabilize the longer a given release is available, the user level rate often climbs. That’s because as more people adopt a new update, the chance that they encounter at least one unexpected error gets higher. We’re still working hard to address unexpected errors in Storyline to improve this metric—it’s been a focus for the past six months—and we are starting to see the results of our work. Downgrades This metric tracks how often a Storyline 360 user updates to a new version of the application—only to downgrade later to an earlier version. We interpret downgrades as an indication that authors encountered issues in a new version that prevented them from completing their work. Last year, we saw this metric dip below 1% at the end of the second quarter and remain there through the middle of the third quarter. Since then, it has climbed and seesawed between 1% and 2%, with a recent spike back to 2%. This spike is due to an increase as we work to remove old third-party dependencies in our Modern Player (so we can keep it Modern 😉). We’ve addressed these issues with a series of service releases, and expect downgrades to return to lower levels in the coming months. Collecting feedback when users downgrade to a previous version of Storyline 360 was very helpful here. Defect Rate This metric tracks the percentage of open support cases associated with an unfixed bug. An increase in this number is a signal that our support team is spending time fielding bug reports instead of helping customers get the most out of our products, so our goal is to keep this value below 10%. This metric has been below the 10% threshold for quite some time now, but it’s getting close to that threshold again. This is also due to the Modern Player dependency removal discussed in the previous section. We’ve addressed many of these issues and will continue to do so if any new ones come in. We rely on support cases to direct our bug-fixing efforts, so I encourage you tocontact our support team if you’re experiencing issues with Storyline 360. Publishing Failures This metric tracks the number of users who get an error during publishing. If you enjoy reading our engineering journals and have a great memory, you may recall this number was around 4.25% last quarter. What happened?! In short, we realized that we were unfairly penalizing ourselves by counting attempts to publish that were canceled by the author. We’ve made a significant effort over the past six months to address most of the top publishing failures. While we haven’t seen a drop in these error percentages yet, we expect to see one because adoption of a new version of Storyline 360 often takes a few months. Release 92 introduced redesigned publishing success and failure dialogs. If publishing fails with a problem the user can address, the user is told what happened and steps they can take to resolve it, an example is the running out of disk space message. Additionally, if publishing fails on a particular slide, we call out that slide so you can look at it and figure out what went wrong, be it a recent change or complex feature. We want you to get unblocked as soon as possible! We’ve got some work left to do to reach our goal of less than 1%. Incomplete Sessions This metric tracks how often Storyline 360 quits unexpectedly due to an error. Our goal is to maintain this metric under 1%. The Storyline team spent Q1 focused on improving this metric as much as possible. The percentage peaked at 3.8% at the end of Q4 last year, and those efforts have slowly made a big difference, as the percentage has steadily dropped this year. We will continue to monitor this closely and revisit it in the future as needed as we aim to achieve our goal. Wrap-Up Due to the lag in the number of users upgrading Storyline each month, we often see that our efforts take months to materialize in these metrics. It can be worrisome as we wonder, Did all that work do anything?! But as we see with reducing the number of incomplete sessions, that work does matter and eventually shows up in the quality statistics we track. We spent the past six months focusing on the publishing failure metric. As the bulk of that work is in the more recent updates, we should see improvements in those metrics soon. If we don’t, we’ll revisit publishing failures and resolve troublesome bugs quickly! In the meantime, if there are any topics you’d like to see covered in these quality updates, please reach out to the team atstoryline-engineering@articulate.com.
