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kmarty
kmarty
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Deleting SumTotal playbar in CP6

Aug 9, 2012 7:26 PM

In version 4 and up to 5.5, I could modify the manifest to delete the SumTotal playbar, so the user just uses the playbar in CP. Now in version 6, I tried to modify the manifest files (I noticed they are in a new location) the same way, but I get an error when I try upload to ST.

 

Does anyone know how to delete the playbar now?

 

Regards,

Kevin

1245 Views   11 Replies   Latest reply: kmarty, Jan 25, 2013 11:32 AM
 
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  • Erik Lord
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    1. Erik Lord,
    Aug 13, 2012 8:57 AM   in reply to kmarty
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    I've never been aware of this issue...

    More out of curiousity, what manifest items were you editing to remove the SumTotal playbar?

    I don't know how/why Captivate's manifest would know to put a SumTotal-specific playbar within the project....

     

    This would seem to be more of a SumTotal question. How/why are they putting their own playbar on top of the Captivate lesson? What can you do to negate that?

     

    Captivate itself surely doesn't have SumTotal-specific settings that are saying "If I'm being shown through SumTotal, show SumTotal's playback bar."...?

     
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  • kmarty
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    2. kmarty,
    Aug 13, 2012 10:39 AM   in reply to Erik Lord
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    Hi Eric,

    I edited the manifest.xml file in CP5 (either in 1.2 or 2004 which ever you are publishing to). (Adobe\Captivate\Templates\Publish)

     

    I found this in a previous forum, and it showed how to modify the manifest so the ST playbar would not show. Now, in CP6 I tried the same thing, but I got an error message when trying to upload my zip file.

     
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  • Erik Lord
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    3. Erik Lord,
    Aug 14, 2012 6:42 AM   in reply to kmarty
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    Not much I can help with there - I don't know the specifics of what's being edited in the CP manifest/template, I don't know why anything in the manifest would be SumTotal specific, and don't know what the error message your LMS is throwing when you upload a file with the edited manifest.

     

    Have you talked to SumTotal about this? I still I doubt (though one never knows) that Captivate would have SumTotal-specific code in it. If SumTotal is putting their own playbar on top of the lesson content, how to prevent that is surely something to discuss with SumTotal. Does this playbar get put on top of all lesson content, regardless of the authoring tool used?

     

    That some manifest line in CP was found to prevent that playbar would seem more...fortuitous than planned or logical, so not terribly surprising that such a 'hack' is not working on later upgrades to the software...

     
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  • kmarty
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    4. kmarty,
    Aug 14, 2012 7:18 AM   in reply to Erik Lord
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    Hi Eric,

    Here are the instructions, which actually came from SumTotal:

     

    1. Publish your presentation for LMS.
    2. On the Publish Successful dialog, click the Open Folder button.
    3. Open the imsmanifest.xml file (from the published output) in a text editor, such as Notepad.
    4. In the manifest tag, add the two attributes highlighted in red below:

      <manifest identifier="XXX" version="1.1" xmlns="http://www.imsproject.org/xsd/imscp_rootv1p1p2" xmlns:adlcp="http://www.adlnet.org/xsd/adlcp_rootv1p2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:c2lcp="http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/xsd/c2l_cp_rootv1p1" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.imsproject.org/xsd/imscp_rootv1p1p2 imscp_rootv1p1p2.xsd http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsmd_rootv1p2p1 imsmd_rootv1p2p1.xsd http://www.adlnet.org/xsd/adlcp_rootv1p2 adlcp_rootv1p2.xsd http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/xsd/c2l_cp_rootv1p1 c2l_cp_rootv1p1.xsd"> 

    1. Add the following code (highlighted in red) at the end of the imsmanifest.xml file after the closing </resource> tag and before the closing </manifest> tag.

    </resources>
    <c2lcp:ItemDataExtra >
    <c2lcp:ItemData Identifier="CRJ200_P_INI_ACGEN_v1.52" Type="Course" >
    <c2lcp:ItemSpecificData >
    <c2lcp:CourseData>
    <c2lcp:PackageProperties >
    <c2lcp:CourseDisplay >
    <c2lcp:TOC>
    <c2lcp:MaxWidth>100</c2lcp:MaxWidth>
    <c2lcp:ScrollBar>yes</c2lcp:ScrollBar>
    <c2lcp:BackgroundColor>cdcdcd</c2lcp:BackgroundColor>
    </c2lcp:TOC>
    <c2lcp:ShowNavBar>no</c2lcp:ShowNavBar>
    </c2lcp:CourseDisplay >
    <c2lcp:Launch >
    <c2lcp:Width>1024</c2lcp:Width>
    <c2lcp:Height>768</c2lcp:Height>
    <c2lcp:AllowResize>yes</c2lcp:AllowResize>
    </c2lcp:Launch >
    </c2lcp:PackageProperties >
    </c2lcp:CourseData>
    </c2lcp:ItemSpecificData >
    </c2lcp:ItemData >
    </c2lcp:ItemDataExtra >
    </manifest>

    1. Save and close the imsmanifest.xml file.
    2. Zip all the published files for your presentation, and upload the zip file to your SumTotal LMS.

    Replace the changed  manifest with the one at the following location, so it will always publish with the changes so ST will not have the play bar.

    C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 4\Templates\Publish\manifest.xml

    For additional information, please refer to the following PDF provided by SumTotal Systems, Inc.:  Working with the API for SCORM Extensions in SumTotal.

     

    The bar shows up no matter what program you use - Captivate or Articulate etc.

     

    Regards,

    Kevin

     
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  • RodWard
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    5. RodWard,
    Aug 14, 2012 8:01 AM   in reply to kmarty
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    Kevin is correct.  There were a number of ways to hack the imsmanifest.xml file that caused SumTotal to modify the SCORM player in ways that were not possible from the standard SumTotal Admin configurations.  For example, using certain code statements allowed you to hide the SCORM playbar, and change the width of the player TOC, which many developers wanted.

     

    These code hacks were detailed in the PDF provided by SumTotal mentioned by Kevin.  However, with the new changes to the SCORM engine in Captivate 6 it seems that these code extensions are not working as expected.  It might take some time before someone more familiar with SumTotal and XML figures out what the issue is and works out a way to get everything working again.

     
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  • Erik Lord
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    6. Erik Lord,
    Aug 14, 2012 3:24 PM   in reply to RodWard
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    Fascinating, and I'm surprised I've never seen reference to this....I guess our exposure to SumTotal is limited! Most I'd heard about with that LMS is needing to modify 'completed/incomplete' to 'C/I'....at least, I think that was SumTotal...

     

    Thanks for the clarificaiton, both.

     

    You've got two components you're adding - one being the URL that allows the XML to be read properly (identifies the 'namespace') and one the actual XML properties you're adding.

     

    If any of the namespace entries at the top are not available, then the later cannot be parsed correctly.

    SO since you're adding SumTotal-specific references, are you SURE those URLs are still active/supported by SumTotal?

     

    An easy way to find out may be to see if an older CP package with these modifications still works as you expect. If it's already in the LMS, does it launch properly? BUT also test re-uploading one of those previously-modified SCORM packages; does it complain now where it didn't before?

     

    I'd suspect that's the problem - that something in the LMS is processing the manifest and not understanding what all those 'cl2cp' lines are for, thus an error is thrown.

     

    (disclaimer on all that, not an XML/namespace pro!)

     

    Or of course, Rod could be right that it's the change to the SCORM engine - who knows exactly what that affected! I think it's more a namespace/XML thing though because, if the error happens when uploading the package to the LMS, it's the parsing that's a problem, the SCORM engine likely isn't invoked yet....BUT it could be the way Rustici formats their manifests...

     

    I don't suppose that 'Kevin' fella is still around?

     
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  • kmarty
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    7. kmarty,
    Aug 15, 2012 6:42 AM   in reply to Erik Lord
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    I can check a file that I uploaded to ST using CP 5.5, to see if it still works correctly. I can also try loading a new module using 5.5 with the modified manifest to see if I get an error.

     

    I will keep you posted.

     

    Thanks all.

     

    Kevin

     
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  • Tfinfer
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    8. Tfinfer,
    Dec 14, 2012 4:12 PM   in reply to kmarty
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    So - you can remove the SumTotal play bar through SumTotal itself without the need of editing the manifest file. Under Learning Activity Properties go to Web Based Training then scroll to just above 'Online Content Access Duration' and you will see an option for 'Hide Content Player Navigation'. Click that box.

     

    On a related note, we started using Cap6 and I'm just now uploading some files with an edited manifest so the player window opens at the proper size and have found that even with the defaul manifest file (with NO edits) that the title, Course code and description are not coming into SumTotal. Are you also having this issue? I'm wondering if this could be related to the SCORM engine changes...or if it's just me. I uploaded a 5.5 file to make sure it wasn't SumTotal and it worked fine, so I have to assume it's something with the manifest files out of Cap6 - but seems strange no one has mentioned it here yet - that I can find anyway.

     
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  • kmarty
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    9. kmarty,
    Dec 15, 2012 8:50 AM   in reply to Tfinfer
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    Thanks so much for the info. I never would have thought of that.

     

    You are not doing anything wrong. I found the same issue. Are you publishing in 1.2 or 2004? I found that if I published in 2004, the course description would go into ST, but not in 1.2.

     

    Regards,

    Kevin

     
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  • Tfinfer
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    10. Tfinfer,
    Dec 17, 2012 7:07 AM   in reply to kmarty
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    Glad to help. I found it by accident myself after substantially updating the manifest file.

     

    Originally, we were trying to keep the sessions in the same SCORM format (1.2) since we are updating them all and I just wanted to upload updated files for everything rather than creating new sessions in SumTotal...well, I assume also due to the SCORM engine changes Cap 6 made, they are not recognized as the same any longer and the existing files can't be updated. So if 2004 works I might as well do that. Thanks for the info!!

     
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  • kmarty
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    11. kmarty,
    Jan 25, 2013 11:32 AM   in reply to Tfinfer
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    I did go back and publish a file using 5.5 and the modified manifest, and the ST playbar did not show up.

     

    I guess someone a lot smarter than me will have to come up with a modified manifest that will hide the playbar.

     

    I could not find the 'Hide Content Player Navigation' checkbox. I may not have access to that on the staging side.

     

    Regards,

    Kevin

     
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