kswanzy --

All of the responses are accurate, though I feel that Captivate's new " Internal Server " tracking option hasn't been addressed fully.

Using an existing web server (if your company has one) or purchasing a domain name and hosting service needn't be an expensive or daunting proposition. Here's the basic scoop:

1. Purchase a domain name for less than $12 (one year, one-time charge).
2. Sign up for hosting for as little as $8.95/month.
3. Before publishing your project, you'll select "Internal Server" from Captivate 5's Quiz Preferences panel and enter a URL where the quiz results should be written.
4. Publish and upload your Captivate files to your new server, making sure to include two PHP files Adobe provided with Captivate. You will simply send learners to that server URL to view your course, and their quiz results will be written to a folder on that server. Everything's in one place!
5. You can still use Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer to generate reports -- just like you would when using Acrobat.com. You just need to open the Preferences panel and insert a URL that points to the results on your server.

Rather than wait for others to say so, I'll admit to leaving out a few details for the sake of clarity -- but they're MINOR details. Nonetheless, the benefit of going this route is that it can be less expensive than subscribing to Acrobat.com.

I'm a subscriber to Acrobat.com and will continue to use it for meetings and document sharing -- it's a great resource, and our clients love it. However, if you don't have a need for those additional capabilities, take a moment to explore this alternative. The skills required are pretty minimal, and even if there's a small learning curve for you, I think you'll be glad you took the challenge!

Randall Bean

What two php files are you talking about?  I have loaded the InternalServerReporting.php. (unedited version) to my server.  When I try to access this file in a web browser I do not get and error (so should be good).  When I post results it says it is successful, but I do not see any new files in CaptivateResults folder (which I also created).  Do I need to load the other php file you are talking about?

Thanks,

Jo

The data Captivate sends when using the internal server method is in XML

format. The standard PHP script Adobe provided simply writes that XML data

as a record in a specific folder. However, you could write your own server

side script to parse the XML data and write it to a database. I haven't done

that yet, but it's clearly possible. I'm thrilled that Adobe has finally

opened up the tracking data, and look forward to tackling that in coming

months.

The two PHP files (included with Captivate) are:

• internalserverread.php
• internalServerReporting.php

You have to dig around just a bit to find them. On the Windows 7 (64-bit) machine, you'll find them here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 5\Templates\Publish

If you're running XP or the 32-bit version of Vista or Windows 7, the path is probably quite similar. It will probably be C:\Program Files instead of C:\Program Files (x86).

NOTE:

I initially had some trouble getting the results to populate in the Quiz Results Analyzer once I published the content up to my LINUX-based server. I contacted Adobe for help and though they didn't say precisely what the problem was, I think the scripts that shipped with Captivate 5 (in July) had been tested only on a Windows-based server. After a little troubleshooting, they got it to work on my LINUX server.

The point is, if your web host is running a Windows-based server, it should work right out of the box. If it's a LINUX or UNIX server, you might need a little help.

I'm with you. I did some more work with the Internal Server reporting option yesterday. And it's really quite good. There's even a decent tutorial of how to use it included with Captivate 5. You can access it by clicking the Tutorials link on the welcome screen and then choosing Alternate Reporting. Or you can launch it directly off your drive (in Windows XP) from this path:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 5\cp_tutorials\index.html

It even walks you through installing WampServer, for people who don't have a web host, for testing it out.

Hi

Has anyone been able to store the result's in a database yet, rather than stroing it as a file on the server??

I'm having an issue trying to publish a Captivate Video Demo directly to Adobe Connect. I'm not seeing an option to publish straight to Connect within Captivate. Here is what I'm seeing on my end:

Does anyone have any insight? I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
Matt