Exit-button behaves differently depending on whether LMS was launched independently or re-directed

[Halina33734455oflw]

Dear community,

we have Adobe Captivate courses in our LMS (SuccessFactors LMS), that were created by an external content provider. When the courses are opened in an iframe (and not in a new browser tab/window), the exit-button behaves fine (with the typical message that you can now navigate away from the page) as long as the user accessed the LMS directly (via browser favorites or a direct link in an e-mail for example).

But when the user was redirected from another page  (in our case it is a general HR page with different HR apps listed via embedded URL on action button), the exit-button in the e-learning will close the whole browser tab of SF LMS. This is unfortunately often leading to the learners losing their progress.

Do you know what could be causing this behavior and what we could tell the provider to avoid it from happening?

Many thanks for your help!

Best regards,

Halina

[Halina33734455oflw]

Do you have any hints for things that we could investigate on?

[RodWard]

This likely due to the way the external content provider has coded the functionality of their exit button.  It is closing the parent window, not just the window that the content is playing from.

Without going back to your content provider and asking them to get involved in testing to rectify the problem, my suggestion would be to just NOT link directly to the course from elsewhere.  Direct people to the LMS and ask them to search for the course by ID code or whatever.

The client I am currently working for (a large multinational) also used SuccessFactors LMS and that's the way they do it.  All courses must be accessed AFTER you log into the LMS.

[Halina33734455oflw]

Many thanks, that helps a lot already! As we as SF LMS support team do not have access to Captivate, I wonder if the behavior of that exit button can be changed by the content provider when they are using the authoring tool or if this is something they cannot change. The content provider is willing to make changes to the contents in general, so if there is some specific setting we can advise them to use also for future productions it would be great to have a screenshot or the name of that setting. For now, we have those contents open in a new browser tab, which also solves the issue as some sort of workaround. But in case we want to have them open in the same browser window in the near future, the exact information of how to set their exit button would be great to pass on to the provider. Many thanks again for taking the time to look into our case! It's highly appreciated!

[RodWard]

If they used the standard Captivate Exit action, there's not really any settings for that you can tweak in the Captivate UI.  If they have programmed their own JavaScript action and had the button execute the action then it could be possible for them to change the JavaScript code.

When it comes to many LMSs (and I believe SuccessFactors is one of them) the safest way to launch the content is in a separate window.  Then it is only that window that can be closed by the content.  The parent windows cannot be closed.  However, if your content is being launched in browser tabs or inside a browser frameset then the entire browser window can potentially be closed by the Exit action.

Where I work, all courses launch from the LMS in their own browser window.  That's what I would recommend you do as well.  Even though some LMSs (e.g. Moodle) may allow direct linking from outside the LMS direct to the course content, in my experience you can run into problem doing this because sometimes the SCORM reporting doesn't work as predictably and user interaction is not recorded.  If the content is launched via the controls built into the LMS everything seems to work more reliably.