Unable to mail score from an assessment video

[azzvyn]

I think I am a pretty decent demo video creator in Adobe Captivate right from version 3 up until version 5.5, which I am using currently. But now I am trying to create Assessment Videos and mail the scores. I am able to create and publish the video just fine, the score comes up on the screen as well with the button displaying the option of "E-mail My Score" also. But nothing happens when I click it. I am attaching the screenshots of the settings here so as to show you the settings I am going with so you guys can help me with please.

Thanks to all of you in advance.

[RodWard]

Groan....(email reporting blues)

If you are sincerely wishing to go down this path...and you are currently testing the functionality from your hard drive, make sure you have set up Flash Global Security to trust the publish folder location on your hard drive.  Better yet, upload your content to a web server and try testing it from there.

However...please search this forum for posts about email reporting blues before you irrevocably commit to this form of reporting.  It's NOT recommended over other options.

[azzvyn]

Grinning naughtily for causing you the groan. Thanks for the help. The help regarding the "Flash Global Security" thing took me right over the testing the functionality bump. Now my video completes and at the end when i click the button "E-mail My Score", it opens up a fresh browser window with my e-mail account open and tries to send an e-mail to the specified e-mail ID but the issue is that there is no attachment. So you were right. I am at the testing stage only. Just trying to figure out the angles currently. Now I gotta figure out regarding why there is not attachment that is the scores.

I agree, eventually uploading the content to a Web server would be the best deal. Now I'll start searching the forums for posts as you recommended. Thanks again for your help RodWard.

[RodWard]

Try NOT using the attachment option.  Have the data in the email body.  Does that work?

If you search this forum for posts about email reporting you're going to get depressed as it doesn't get a good rap.  There are many ways this type of reporting can fall over, and most of those reasons are beyond your control.  People tend to blame Adobe or Captivate for the failures, but in most cases it's just the nature of the beast that is email.  We tend to forget that when WE use email, we're always taking explicit user actions. But when we want to use it as a method of course reporting, we want to have it all automated at the click of a Send button without any further user interaction.  Unfortunately, there are reasons why most email clients and browsers deliberately try to thwart that kind of behaviour.

[azzvyn]

Yes I tried having the data in the email body as well. But the email body stays blank only in the end.

When I am running the video file and clicking the button, it opens the Google Chrome browser only (whereas I am running the video in Internet Explorer) and opens my gmail account in that browser, and tries to send a blank email with today's date in the subject.

So what's the next step you would advise in this case?

[RodWard]

Open a brand new blank project, add ONE True/false quiz question.  Go to Quiz Preferences and set to email reporting with your own email address entered in the field.  Set the rest of the Preferences as shown below:

Hit Ctrl + Enter to Preview the movie.  Answer the single quiz question and click the Send Email button on the Quiz Results slide.

What does it do for you?

On my box with MS Outlook it creates an email that looks like this:

[azzvyn]

Now this is the funniest game. I performed all the steps you said and previewed the project, it shows the result just like you said. But when I publish the project, it shows a blank e-mail. Why does it do that? Is it because gmail is blocking it on some level?

In fact, I even previewed one of my own projects that I was working on earlier. Even generated an e-mail with scores inside the body just fine. But publishing it as a project is the problem area. So I guess that's the problem area.

[RodWard]

Perhaps now you have a newfound respect for my earlier groan when I suggested that email reporting is likely to be more trouble than it's worth.

There are potentially dozens of reasons why it won't work and they vary from one person's PC to another, each person's specific Flash Global Security configuration, one browser to another, the settings in those browsers, their email client of choice, the settings in that email client, internet or network issues, it goes on and on.

Everybody blames Captivate, but in my experience the failure points are usually outside Captivate's control.

If you followed my steps and it worked just as I showed in the screenshots of my last post with the email body showing the quiz results, then was THAT email in GMail or in another email client?

[azzvyn]

In total respect to your groan (;-)) I agree that I ain't blaming Captivate. Well I did follow the steps that you provided and yes I was providing gmail as the target e-mail ID. The published video was getting run in IE but upon clicking the "Send e-mail" button, it opened the Google Chrome browser on its own, and opened up my google e-mail ID and tried sending an e-mail to itself. And the e-mail was blank. That's how it was happening up till now.

Now I uninstalled Google Chrome to remove one option. I agree its an unrealistic point of attack but just wanted to remove a point of problem.

Then I replaced the target e-mail ID with my office e-mail ID.

Now when I ran the video and publsihed the video, it opened up my MS Outlook, and tried sending an e-mail to my office e-mail ID (it is associated with my Outlook). So again it was from same ID to same ID in this case. But again, blank e-mail with no content. This e-mail being blank is the part that is dancing teasingly around my head.

[azzvyn]

Also, I tried keeping my gmail ID as the target e-mail ID with Google Chrome uninstalled. It opens up MS Outlook and addresses the e-mail to my Gmail ID, but still the e-mail is blank. So as I said, the e-mail being blank is the issue here.

[RodWard]

OK.  Try this:

Open up Flash Global Security again and this time Trust your whole C drive.

Then test the email reporting again.

[azzvyn]

That's what I did when I originally enabled the Flash Global Security.

[azzvyn]

By the way, thanks a lot for all the patience you are showing in this issue

[RodWard]

And your Captivate project file is located somewhere on your C: drive?

Are you publishing out to a folder on your C: drive?

Are all Default Locations shown in your Project Preferences also locations on your C: drive (as per below)?

[azzvyn]

Yes I ensured that right from the beginning. Earlier the source captivate file was on the E: drive but then I moved that also onto the C: drive also just to be safe.

[RodWard]

When it spawns an email in Outlook, what type of email format is it according to the Options tab of that email?

[azzvyn]

In both cases, i.e. (as a preview and as a finished project) they are coming the same for you i.e. HTML only.

[RodWard]

OK.  Let's take another tack.

Open up Notepad on your PC, start a new file and insert the exact text found on the next line:

<h1><a href="mailto:rod.ward@infosemantics.com.au?subject=subject=This is my subject line&body=This is some body text">Click this</a></h1>

Then save the file with an HTM or HTML file ending and try it out.  It should spawn a new email in your email client with a subject line and some body text as well.

Does this fail on your system the same way as the Captivate ones do?

[azzvyn]

This opens up like this.

[RodWard]

OK.  That at least works, which means that the issue is not necessarily an inability to execute a complex mailto: link (one with the subject and body content specified).

If you are able to successfully also execute this same mailto: link using other browsers on your system, it would seem that we're dealing with something that prevents the email from being generated correctly from a Flash SWF.

[azzvyn]

So now what should I be looking towards? As in any specific questions or query statement that I should search for on the internet externally or internally?

[Captiv8r]

Hi gents

Of course, I totally stand to be corrected on this, but isn't GMail a web based email client? As such, you access it using a browser? I'm thinking perhaps in this case that's the whole thing in a nutshell. (typical email issues aside)

Unless something has changed recently (and it may have) I believe things like opening an EMail message with data populated relied on something known as MAPI. That's an acronym for Mail Application Programming Interface. That means there is a protocol for sending data to an email client (such as Outlook or Thunderbird) that understands how to parse and work with the data sent. I'm not sure if that holds true for these browser based clients.

Just some musings from the edge.

Happy Friday! Rick

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[RodWard]

I don't think it's just the MAPI issue.  I did some research and found lots of posts from people complaining about mailto: links not working as expected, especially with IE8.

Assvyn also noted in one of the posts above trying to use MS Outlook instead of GMail but without any better result.