Building an Index from Several Captivate Projects

[ruthg84]

Hi,

I am creating a proofreading and editing course in Captivate 9 (9.0.2.437) and want to build an index that lists all the slide headings from all the different SCORM projects (there will eventually be about 14 different Captivate projects in all). I would like this index to sit on the hosting site (Talent LMS) and to be interactive- so that a user could click on a title and be taken to the correct slide.

Is there a way to create an index that hyperlinks to several different captivate projects?

Best,

Ruth

[RodWard]

What you're describing here is not really allowed by the SCORM standard as each separate SCO is not supposed to call anything outside itself.  The LMS launches each SCO in response to the user's actions clicking the link provided by the LMS to launch that module or course.

If all of these modules belong to a single course, you can use the Multi-SCORM Packaging tool that comes with Captivate to bundle them all up into a single multi-SCORM course.  If your LMS is able to handle multi-SCORMs then it will create a Table of Contents in the SCORM player with links to launch each of the component SCOs.  But it will not create links to individual slides below that level of the SCO.

[ruthg84]

Thanks. That's a shame. Can I suggest this functionality as a future development?

[RodWard]

Go for it!  But telling anyone here isn't regarded as logging the enhancement request.  You need to log it via this form:

Adobe Captivate

However, since the main restriction is really with the SCORM standard rather than with Captivate, you might still find yourself out of luck.  I suggest you investigate the new xAPI (Tin Can) LMS integration standard that is (very gradually) replacing SCORM.  If your LMS is an LRS as well and can support this newer standard then maybe you should be using that.

[ruthg84]

Thanks for this Rod. I will have a look. Do you know if indexing would be possible with xAPI (Tin Can)?

[RodWard]

Sorry, No I don't know the answer to that question.

[TLCMediaDesign]

What you are wanting can be done, but you are going to need to write custom scripts in all of the SCO's.

You will need a custom imsmanifest.xml to link to the "index" file.

In the links in the "index" file, you will need to pass a URL parameter containing the slide label.

You will need a custom script in the sco to read the parameter and then jump to the slide containing the specified label. You would also need to override the bookmarking.

I'm pretty sure that the menu could be made fairly dynamic, in that is could generate all of the links if you specify a variable up front that sets the number of SCOs.

[ruthg84]

Thank you. That does all sound a bit too advanced for me though. Do you have any tutorials about any of the steps involved in this? I don't even really understand what you mean by 'SCO', how to create a custom script, or how to override the bookmarking. Also I am not sure how to host the index file, what it needs to look like, or where it needs to go!

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

I know you used the acronym SCORM in your opening post. But later you seem confused by the use of SCO (Which is the first part of SCORM). As such, it seems you may be aware of the term but not really know what it actually means.

The question here is to ask if you are planning on uploading your content to a Learning Management System (LMS)? Or are you simply wanting to provide a swarm of courses with some way to organize them and allow users to navigate to the one they want and you really don't care about reporting or tracking and all that?

If that's the case, you may want to investigate using another Adobe product called "RoboHelp". RoboHelp would nicely allow you to basically create a web site that has all sorts of index keywords to assist your users in finding the Captivate video they want. You could also create a nice Table of Contents and other features. And like Captivate, it has a Responsive HTML 5 output as well.

Worth looking at if you aren't using a LMS.

Cheers... Rick

[ruthg84]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I don't really know too much about SCORMs etc. It's all pretty new to me. We are hosting our course on Talent LMS, which seems to be working out fine at the moment, but doesn't have any way that we can create an index. I am also investigating the Tin Can option which Rod suggested above. I'm not sure if we really need that much ability to track learning, at least not at the outset.

Thank you for your suggestions.

[TLCMediaDesign]

I was just outlining the fact that it could be done. It is something that our company could do, as we develop custom SCORM packages for multi-lingual courses also, which is along the same lines.

[ruthg84]

OK, thanks very much, good to know!