10:30 gabe hi everyone!
10:30 Mike Rustici howdy
10:30 Dave Mozealous - Articulate hi Gabe, and everyone else
10:30 gabe welcome to the articulate community chat! and our scheduled discussion on LMS selection!
10:31 GerryWaz Hey, Mike!
10:31 GerryWaz Nice to see you here?
10:31 gabe so where does everyone here stand? current articulate customer with an LMS? looking for an LMS? looking to change?
10:32 GerryWaz current Articulate customer with LMS (Saba 5.3) - just migrated to
10:32 Justin Hello, everyone.
10:32 Pauline Developing in Articulate - want to sell our e-learning to clients. If our clients have their own LMS... I want to know what to look out for when we try to integrate
10:32 gabe welcome, pauline!
10:33 gabe and hope your migration went well, gerry!
10:33 GerryWaz too scarred to knoe :)
10:33 gabe pauline- i'd say the #1 biggest thing to look out for is ensuring that you launch content via index_lms.html. that's probably the most common mistake.
10:34 gabe and also disabling the option in the articulate player template builder to launch in a new window- since most LMSes do that for you- it can lead to tracking issues.
10:34 GerryWaz and setting the right pass\fail pair for reporting
10:35 brianosmi From visiting the forums I have found that different LMSes require different pass / fail settings, so it can be trial and error at first.
10:35 gabe right. good call, gerry. some LMSes can handle any pair, others only certain pair.
10:35 brianosmi We're currently using PathLore (purchased by SumTotal last year) and are planning to change LMS vendors in 2008. We are currently in the selection process.
10:35 Leslie We found with testing that content published in SCORM doesn't seem to have this issue, though.
10:35 Justin and unchecking the prompt to resume in Articulate -> Player Template Builder -> Navigation http://www.articulate.com/blog/to-resume-or-not-to-resume-that-is-the-lms-question/
10:35 GerryWaz yes, we found the fail status did something unexpected in our new Saba system
10:36 brianosmi Gerry, do you like Saba? I've read some good reviews on the system
10:36 GerryWaz i think they are getting there
10:36 brianosmi When you upgraded to the version you are at now was changing vendors even an option?
10:36 GerryWaz they have the right vision, their support is improving
10:37 Leslie Brian - what other LMS vendors are you looking at?
10:37 GerryWaz changing versions was not an option due to
10:37 GerryWaz 1) the money we already had invested in Saba
10:37 brianosmi We have SumTotal, Cornerstone OnDemand and OnPoint Digital as our top three
10:38 GerryWaz 2) any other new system we brought in required going through an intense IT approval process and a delay of over a year
10:38 Dave Mozealous - Articulate Brian, I would be curious to hear what your process is for choosing an LMS. Like are you primarily concerned with features offered, communication type (AICC, SCORM, etc), or anything else.
10:38 GerryWaz we liked cornerstone but it was enterprise level
10:38 brianosmi We just eliminated the Allen Communications Learning Portal as a viable option for us. Allen has a good platform but it is not (currently) robust enough for what we needed.
10:38 GerryWaz we went with the enterprise level players inGartner's Magic Quadrant
10:39 GerryWaz correction--cornerstone was not enterprise level
10:39 Pauline OnPoint is our first choice with Net Dimensions second. Anyone have experience using Articulate with OnPoint? They claim that it works really well, but I haven't seen an Articulate demo on their LMS yet
10:39 brianosmi (good to know about Cornerstone Gerry - we're taking a closer look at them next week)
10:40 Norman Timmermann, Munich Hi, everyone - just presented articulate presenter in my company. I wish Articulate's LMS was more powerful
10:40 Justin I've never had a support case about OnPoint so that could be a good sign!
10:40 gabe or a sign that none of our customers are using onpoint. :)
10:40 GerryWaz One should investigate how the LMS handles AICC or sCORM reporting
10:40 gabe (which i'm not sure about)
10:41 brianosmi Pauline, you should be able to ask them to either refer you to customers that are using Articulate or provide you with a "sandbox" area that you could use for testing Articulate content
10:41 GerryWaz that was one weakness in our previous version of Saba that Mike Rustici and Articulate helped us with
10:41 gfriese The Articulate content that EPS is creating is distributed through the CentreLearn LMS
10:41 Pauline thank you
10:41 Norman Timmermann, Munich which LMS works best with Articulate?
10:41 GerryWaz Articulate content does a lot of quick posting to the LMS at various times and the LMS needs to keep up with it
10:42 GerryWaz We hear many LMS vendors are starting to charge for the sandboxes
10:42 GerryWaz kinda discouraging
10:42 Mary Hi! Has anyone used Geolearning?
10:42 GerryWaz but we can see their point also
10:43 GerryWaz We looked at that also a couple of years ago
10:43 Leslie Does anyone have experience using Articulate on Plateau? Our client is probably moving there from Saba
10:43 gabe hi mary, and welcome!
10:43 gabe hi norman- what are some of the features you'd like to see in articulate online?
10:43 GerryWaz Geo was also impressive
10:44 Norman Timmermann, Munich load 3rd party courses...
10:44 GerryWaz One of the downers for a lot of LMS's, Saba included, is that we feel they are based on an old metaphor
10:44 GerryWaz and that is that employees will have time to learn the LMS
10:44 GerryWaz in our company, people are SO busy that is not practical
10:45 GerryWaz people need to get in quick, get their traing and leave
10:45 scoobadiver hello everybody!
10:45 gabe hi scooba! welcome!
10:45 Dave Mozealous - Articulate Hey Gerry, I think that is a good point
10:45 Dave Mozealous - Articulate we have a saba sandbox we use
10:45 scoobadiver hi gabe what's up?
10:45 Dave Mozealous - Articulate for testing
10:45 Justin I think that's one of the advantages of Articulate Online, Gerry. It's pretty easy to get up and running with little training.
10:45 GerryWaz We've been telling Saba that and in fact we've been giving them feedback on their next generation gUI
10:45 Dave Mozealous - Articulate and in my impression it is very complicated
10:46 GerryWaz yes--Saba is complicated bit so are most that we have looked at
10:46 Dave Mozealous - Articulate yeah, exactly
10:46 scoobadiver Hello???
10:46 Norman Timmermann, Munich Moodle scores very high in satisfaction. Would you recommend it for companies?
10:46 brianosmi Any enterprise LMS is going to be complicated, the more features the more complication.
10:46 GerryWaz So one think we like about Saba is their commttemtn to web services and extending the LMS outside of itself
10:46 scoobadiver :\
10:46 Dave Mozealous - Articulate and to be honest, the complicatedness factor is what drove a lot of the Articulate Online design
10:46 Justin Hi scoobadiver.
10:46 GerryWaz Saba is very strong there
10:47 GerryWaz Portals
10:47 scoobadiver hi Justin
10:47 GerryWaz Links outside the LMS that takes a learner inside the LMS to do something
10:47 Dave Mozealous - Articulate hey Norman, in regards to Moodle
10:47 Dave Mozealous - Articulate I have used it in the past
10:47 GerryWaz we call these "deeplinks"
10:48 brianosmi deeplinks is something we cannot currently do with PathLore
10:48 Dave Mozealous - Articulate part of my problems with it was that it often seemed very unstable
10:48 brianosmi But we would love to
10:48 scoobadiver Anybody there t discuss about sth?
10:48 GerryWaz we had one developed by Saba that, from outside the LMS, takes the learner in, register them for the wBT and then lauches it for them
10:48 brianosmi Gerry, does Saba use web services to accomplish the deep linking ability?
10:48 Dave Mozealous - Articulate SCORM communication would work in one build, and then not in another
10:49 Norman Timmermann, Munich I hear it works quite well - i just dont know if we should use it. Someone has to support us there...
10:49 GerryWaz not sure on that--i'll get back to you on that
10:49 Justin scooba what's sth?
10:49 Dave Mozealous - Articulate so I always struggled getting it working locally
10:49 scoobadiver I guess everybody's tooooo busy!
10:49 Justin scooba what's the question?
10:49 Dave Mozealous - Articulate Norman, you might want to check out some of the moodle service providers
10:49 Dave Mozealous - Articulate that will host the site for you
10:50 Dave Mozealous - Articulate that way you could take the moodle implementation out of your hands
10:50 scoobadiver nothing, just was eager t talk about an interesting topic
10:50 Norman Timmermann, Munich ok thx dave, will do. i would love to buy Articulate's LMS - why dont you push development there a little?
10:50 brianosmi And I believe that is becoming more popular, Dave. I have a colleague who has started a business doing just that: Web hosting with Moodle set up
10:50 Kevin Brady, NY We use Moodle internally to test SCORM packages with
10:50 gabe scooba- you might be in the wrong place. this is an Articulate LMS selection chat. if you're not interested, feel free to leave.
10:51 GerryWaz I think the big hitters are trying to do everything and runing so fast, especially in integrating the talent mgmt and performance mgmt stuff
10:51 brianosmi Pauline, were you saying that you had OnPoint as your front runner? What is it you liked about OnPoint?
10:51 Dave Mozealous - Articulate Norman, are you refering to Articulate Online as Articulate's LMS?
10:52 GerryWaz the vision is compelling but according to bersin the executino is not there yet
10:52 Dave Mozealous - Articulate is the main feature that you are looking for support of other content other than Articulate content?
10:52 GerryWaz I think Saba has the right vision there in that integration
10:52 GerryWaz We just find their "execution" challenging sometimes
10:52 Kevin Brady, NY Dave - Is there a developer version of AO so that folks can test their packages before deployment in a big messy environment?
10:53 Norman Timmermann, Munich no the other one ;) ... but I like AO, too. It is not even promoted on the website
10:53 Justin Gerry you use Saba with AICC content exclusively right? I usually only see SCORM issues in support with Saba.
10:53 GerryWaz ultimately, the vision of integrated LMS - TMS - PMS is compelling
10:54 sarah Hello Kevin. There is a free, 30-day trial of AO (fully-functioning) that you can use to test in your environment.
10:54 Dave Mozealous - Articulate Hey Kevin, not sure I follow on the developer version...AO isn't ever messy :-)
10:54 GerryWaz One thing you want to look at is how configurable the LMS is
10:54 Dave Mozealous - Articulate but yeah, as Sarah mentions, we do offer a 30 day trial
10:55 GerryWaz You want one where you can keep customizations (chnages to the code) to none or minimum
10:55 brianosmi I don't even believe that more features is necessarily a bad thing, but there needs to be more focus on making the user experience smooth, painless and problem free
10:55 GerryWaz Amen, Brian!
10:55 Norman Timmermann, Munich gerry - which one does offer that level of configurability? Recommendations?
10:56 GerryWaz I'm only familar with Saba so I'm not the best to answer that
10:56 Dave Mozealous - Articulate Brian, that is interesting about your friend doing moodle hosting, given that moodle is based on open source technologies, as long as you are technically savy enough to get it up and running, your operating costs would probably be pretty low
10:56 Kevin Brady, NY3 strage just dumped me
10:56 GerryWaz I like what they've done but they need to do even more
10:56 brianosmi Pauline, you mentioned that you were looking at OnPoint. What are the strong points with OnPoint that you really like?
10:56 GerryWaz I wish I could comment more on future directions but we're under NDA--just liek we are with articulate
10:57 Norman Timmermann, Munich ...for example Skill management.
10:57 Pauline Hi Brian - if you scroll up... I listed a whole bunch of features:)
10:57 GerryWaz Another thing important is your IT resources or skills of your provider--especially in solving LMS content issues
10:57 Kevin Brady, NY3 Dave - no, I like AO and it's usability, What I was asking was, is there a free-type (maybe limited to one or two user) account available? If folks had a known, reliable system to test with, it would probably result in more sales eventually.
10:58 brianosmi Thanks Pauline, I must have missed it.
10:58 GerryWaz solving e-learning content issues is the #2 problem with LMS implementations according to bersin
10:58 Pauline I think most of all - their solution seems so easy to navigate...
10:59 brianosmi Easy to navigate for a learner, for the admin or both?
10:59 Pauline both
10:59 sarah Hello Kevin, I would recommend using the free, 30-day trial to test AO (fully-functioning)
10:59 brianosmi That's very nice
11:00 brianosmi Gerry, on your comment about solving eLearning content issues, there are companies that are able to stay in business by making eLearning content work with LMSes
11:00 Dave Mozealous - Articulate Yeah, as Sarah said, we offer a 30-day free trial account hosted on our own servers that you can test and play with
11:00 GerryWaz I bet
11:00 Kevin Brady, NY3 30 day is fine for 'kicking the tires" before you buy - but I'm talking about a plan that would allow users to keep a (limited) account open. 30-days would not work for a developer.
11:01 GerryWaz I think Articulate has been exemplary in helping us solve issues
11:01 Kevin Brady, NY3 I think one of the problems with choosing a LMS is the learning curve
11:01 Mike Rustici making eLearning content work with LMSes is what we do....www.scorm.com
11:01 brianosmi I can say that as a whole we have had few problems with Articulate and PathLore, and the problems we do have are on the PathLore side of things
11:01 brianosmi Nice to meet you Mike!
11:02 Norman Timmermann, Munich Does anyone have experience with Microsoft Sharepoint as an LMS?
11:02 Mike Rustici same here. let us know if we can be of any assistance
11:02 Kevin Brady, NY3 If a developer is comfortable with a certain system (SumTotal, Saba, Moodle, etc..) thier that much more likely to recommend that system to clients. - That would be Articulate's benefit in opening up dev accounts.
11:02 GerryWaz Most of our e-elearing problems have to do with processing completions and Mike's relay file has been a miracle worker
11:03 brianosmi Pauline, it sounds like you are currently in the selection process for an LMS vendor, as we are. If you would like to share some notes feel free to email me at: --------------------------
11:03 GerryWaz Even with that, it seems impossible to get completions to work 100% of the time - our goal is 99.9%+ success
11:03 Mike Rustici have heard mixed reviews of sharepoint, heard of lots of scorm problems, but the scorm side of things is about all we look at
11:03 GerryWaz Another thing to do is have LMS governance
11:03 GerryWaz which we have brought into place wiht our new version
11:03 sarah kevin - i agree that comfort and proficiency lead to better recommendations. If you'd like to send your contact info to ------------------ we can see what options might be available.
11:04 GerryWaz Settle on just one or two auhtoring tools, get to know them, and have users and vendors use them
11:04 Pauline Thanks, Brian - I will. I can be reached at --------------------------------
11:04 GerryWaz you know what the problems are, can counsel others, and eliminate having to support everything
11:05 brianosmi LMS governance is a good thing, but hard to do when you have very decentralized training departments, many doing their own thing oblivious to others.
11:05 Norman Timmermann, Munich sharepoint will probably have a big impact as a portal which embeds LMS content as webparts
11:05 GerryWaz Brian, you're right--but we are in the same boat and are trying
11:06 GerryWaz We cannot afford to support everything
11:06 brianosmi Same here. We have made some great strides over the last couple of years to settle on common authoring tools, naming conventions, etc.
11:06 GerryWaz So we push Articulate (our most popular tool) and then Lectora, or ODPN
11:07 brianosmi Never heard of ODPN
11:07 Kevin Brady, NY3 What if any results have people had with open-source (other than Moodle).
11:07 Kevin Brady, NY3 Lectora - noooooooo! it's actually not that bad once you get used to it. But I'm still having flashbacks ;-)
11:08 GerryWaz yeah, we have problems with their Java applet and have moved to their javascript way of publishing
11:08 GerryWaz Articulate is our biggest tool and growing
11:08 brianosmi Well everyone, work beckons me and I must leave the chat. Thanks all
11:08 GerryWaz PM, brian, if you want more
11:08 brianosmi Gabe, is there a way to download a copy of the dialog?
11:08 brianosmi Gerry, sure will. Thanks again
11:08 Pauline I have to leave too. This was great (although hard to keep up sometimes :)
11:08 gabe thanks for joining, brian - and suggesting this topic for today!
11:09 Dave Mozealous - Articulate me too unfortunately. It was great hearing everyones feedback
11:09 gabe yes, i can do a blog entry or forum post with link to transcript
11:09 Pauline that would be great!
11:09 brianosmi Awesome, thanks again Gabe.
11:09 gabe sure thing, brian! take care.
11:09 Pauline Lots of good info in a short time - thanks again!
11:09 Dave Mozealous - Articulate if you have any specific suggestions on how we can improve our products we have form that really helps to driver feature development:
11:09 Dave Mozealous - Articulate http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/feature/
11:09 Dave Mozealous - Articulate thanks everyone for attending and all feedback
11:10 Kevin Brady, NY3 thanks dave - bye!
11:10 Mary Thank you!
11:10 GerryWaz If we know exactly what was coming :)
11:10 Norman Timmermann, Munich bye
11:10 GerryWaz Couldn't resist, Gabe! :)
11:11 Norman Timmermann, Munich this chat window is just so tiny
11:11 GerryWaz Another thing--if you bringing the LMS in-house is make sure you have committment, both short and long-term on the project
11:11 gabe you have a record to maintain in these chats, gerry! :)
11:11 GerryWaz from your IT organization
11:11 GerryWaz they can make or break you
11:12 gabe norman- i'll get the link to this transcript for you now- it updates live, so you can review what we've discussed or refresh to see latest.
11:13 Norman Timmermann, Munich ok
11:13 gabe http://chatlogs.meebo.com/room/articulatecommunitychat/logs/today/
11:13 GerryWaz Also, if you have usability folks in house, use them as you choose or configure your LMS
11:13 gabe (when i blog it, there will likely be a permanent link that's different than that one)
11:14 Norman Timmermann, Munich thanks gabe
11:16 gabe sure thing, norman.
11:16 gabe so anything else to chat about? this has been a great discussion today! fast & furious! :)
11:16 Norman Timmermann, Munich how often do you have this chat?
11:17 gabe it's monthly - 3rd wednesday of every month
11:17 gabe
http://www.articulate.com/support/articulate-calen…
11:17 gabe topic not always the same, but we're always open for suggestions!
11:18 gabe thanks, everyone, for joining us today!
11:19 Norman Timmermann, Munich thanks! bye.
