Tracking your Captivate projects without an LMS
One of the most common questions I read on forums and blogs is how you can track your Captivate projects if you don’t have an LMS.
There are many different ways of doing this and it also depends on what you want to track. If you want to track which users complete your course, their score, time used etc. then you are looking at a rather complex scenario. You would need to use some databases to store the relevant information in and you would also need the user to input their name / employee number in the beginning of the course. You then need to manipulate Captivate’s email score functionality in order to save it into a database. You can read more about this on Phillips blog here – http://pipwerks.com/journal/2008/09/07/send-captivate-quiz-data-to-javascript/
If you are interested in tracking how many users open your project/course then there is a much simpler approach.
I found a service called MochiBot a while back, which can help you track how many times a particular swf has been viewed. Since Captivate projects essentially are swf’s then you can use this service.
It’s 100% free and extremely simple to setup. It takes 2 minutes to make an account and then you are ready to setup your first Mochibot.
The Mochibot Dashboard
You will need Adobe Flash in order to make these Mochibots since the code used is actionscript. If you don’t have a copy of Adobe Flash you can buy one here or download a free 30-day trial.
Adobe Flash CS4 Professional – Full
Once you are ready click “create your own Mochibot” and enter the name of your project (or whatever you want it to be). Remove the tick in “rank this SWF” if you don’t want the name of your project to be publically viewable.
After that you will receive a code like this:
// MochiBot.com — Version 8
// Tested with with Flash 5-8, ActionScript 1 and 2
function __com_mochibot__(swfid, mc, lv, trk) {
var x,g,s,fv,sb,u,res,mb,mbc,pv; mb = ‘__mochibot__’; mbc = “mochibot.com”; g = _global ? _global : _level0._root; if (g[mb + swfid]) return g[mb + swfid]; s = System.security; x = mc._root['getSWFVersion']; fv = x ? mc.getSWFVersion() : (_global ? 6 : 5); if (!s) s = {}; sb = s['sandboxType']; if (sb == “localWithFile”) return null; x = s['allowDomain']; if (x) s.allowDomain(mbc); x = s['allowInsecureDomain']; if (x) s.allowInsecureDomain(mbc); pv = (fv == 5) ? getVersion() : System.capabilities.version; u = “http://” + mbc + “/my/core.swf?mv=8&fv=” + fv + “&v=” + escape(pv) + “&swfid=” + escape(swfid) + “&l=” + lv + “&f=” + mc + (sb ? “&sb=” + sb : “”) + (trk ? “&t=1″ : “”); lv = (fv > 6) ? mc.getNextHighestDepth() : g[mb + "level"] ? g[mb + "level"] + 1 : lv; g[mb + "level"] = lv; if (fv == 5) { res = “_level” + lv; if (!eval(res)) loadMovieNum(u, lv); } else { res = mc.createEmptyMovieClip(mb + swfid, lv); res.loadMovie(u); } return res;
}
__com_mochibot__(“a44f0eea”, this, 10301, true);
You just copy and paste this into a new flash file and publish it as an swf. Afterwards import the swf into your Captivate project and re-publish. That’s it. Now all you need to do is make your Captivate project available online and you will be able to track the number of views easily.
Detail view of a Mochibot Tracker
You can make as many Mochibot as you like and as always it’s 100% free. I usually make two Mochbots for each project. One on the first page of the project and one on the last page. That way I can see how many people I loose halfway into the course.
Read more about it here: http://www.mochibot.com
