When I was growing up, I had a friend who had a HUGE family. She was 1 of 12 brothers and sisters and I was super jealous of her. You see, I was stuck smack dab in the middle of two brothers, and having more siblings just wasn’t ever in the cards for me. Then I came to Rustici Software, where it’s essentially the workplace version of 19 Kids and Counting (I don’t actually watch this show, but it chronicles an ever-growing family). Today, I’m excited to announce that we have TWO new employees joining us! Not that this is surprising, given our previous pattern of behavior. Unfortunately, I can’t find a way to make their names rhyme. Anywho, Stephanie Fletcher and Zach Lowry are the newest additions to our family here at Rustici Software. Stephanie is bringing her business development talents to the Tin Can API team. She has also single handedly increased the percentage of females at Rustici Software to 28%! We’re really excited to have her and see what awesome things she can bring to the Tin Can API team. Zach has also joined our team, but he’ll be focused on developing cool software. Zach drives into work everyday from Manchester, TN (over an HOUR away, now that’s dedication!) and we’re looking forward to seeing him bring that dedication to our software and our culture. Think you’re ready to join our family? Let us know! We’re always on the lookout for great talent The post Take that, TLC! appeared first on SCORM - .

We don’t get a lot of visitors around the office. Our family members come by, and occasionally a customer will fly in to meet us in person, but that’s about it. This is mostly due to the nature of our business. Most of our customers are looking to fix a very specific problem, and they find us on the Internet. A conversation is started, and we help where we can. Because of the "virtual" way that we do business, most people don’t ever see our office. It’s kind of a shame, because we like our office. We spent a lot of time figuring out what it should look like, and what design would suit us and our culture the best. A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with my friend Kerry Woo, and he was telling me about how he’d been taking photos of local businesses for Google, and turning them into virtual tours that get posted to Google Maps/Places. It’s like Google Street View, but for the inside of businesses. Perfect! We scheduled a time for Kerry to come over and create a virtual tour of our office. Within a few days, we were all done, and our virtual tour was online. You can learn a lot about a company by seeing their workspace, and now our customers (and potential employees) can see where we spend our days.   The post An office says a lot about a company. appeared first on SCORM - .

My husband recently turned 44. I like to make him feel better about getting older by sharing things with him that are older than he is. You know one thing that’s older than 44? The cassette tape — it was actually born in 1962. Even all of these years later, after CDs and iTunes have surpassed cassettes, there are just times when I want to hear those old mixtapes and Grateful Dead bootleg cassettes. Fortunately, my car has a tape player so I can still listen to them. What does this have to do with SCORM? Well, remember when the Walkman was released? It changed how music was listened to. All of the sudden, you could take your music with you everywhere. We did something pretty exciting and a bit curious recently. We created the "Walkman" of SCORM. SCORM uses active browser sessions as if they were oxygen, so when you take away a network connection, SCORM breaks. Well, we added an extension to SCORM Engine that allows for SCORM content to be played and tracked from a mobile device — even when that device is offline. A bonus is that it lets learners seamlessly continue progress in a course across platforms. Start learning on a computer, finish on an iPod Touch, for example. We realize that folks have a lot of SCORM content on the shelf, and that’s not going away anytime soon. Also, the demand for mobile delivery grows every day. So, while we expect Tin Can to be the preferred method for mobile and offline training going forward, we have another option for you today that works with your existing SCORM libraries — the SCORM Engine mobile/offline extension. Even all of these years later, I still have tapes to play, and my Walkman to play them in (it has to be a collector’s item by now.) And now, we’ve found a way bring this same kind of mobility to SCORM. Want to take your SCORM content for a test drive on our demo mobile app? Just ask — we’ll be glad to take it for a spin. The post Mixtapes and Mobile SCORM appeared first on SCORM - .

I believe that we create such great products because we have an amazing company, not the other way around. We talk a lot about SCORM, the Tin Can API, and the products that we make. We know these things well, and we enjoy talking to the world about them. What we don’t talk about a lot (and this is changing) is who Rustici Software is and what it’s like to work here. We make excellent products that do a great job at solving difficult problems, but behind our products are our people and our culture. We have some of the smartest people on Earth here, and we are one of the best places to work, period. We built a new website to let the world know about what it’s like to work here. This site isn’t about our products, it’s about our company. It’s about how things are done at Rustici Software, and it’s designed to let you know what work should be like. This new site started as some of Jena’s sketches, and it ended as a brand new site. My favorite page of the new site is what I call the "Testimonials" page, where we all have a place to say why we like working here. See photos of the things we do, learn who we are, see why you want to work with us (don’t forget to check out Jenafits), and check out our company blog. I hope that you can glimpse of what life should be like on our new company homepage, RusticiSoftware.com. The post Who we are, not what we make… appeared first on SCORM - .

There’s something that we like to do here at Rustici Software — make life easier by solving problems with software. This time around, it’s solving some Tin Can (xAPI) problems in SCORM Engine and SCORM Cloud. SCORM Engine and SCORM Cloud have been updated to v. 2013.2. I won’t list all of the updates in this post, but I’ll point out a few of the big ones. Statement Forwarding. One of the advantages of Tin Can is the sharing of data between multiple LRSs, but it requires some coding knowledge and some time to make that happen. We added a new feature to SCORM Engine that makes it easy to forward Tin Can statements on to any other LRSs, and we’re currently in the process of rolling this out on SCORM Cloud New and improved Console. For those Engine customers that have used the Console feature, you’ll be happy to discover that we’ve greatly improved the functionality by adding pagination for package browsing and a new Bootstrap-based UI, among other goodies. Tin Can / SCORM Parity Reports. If you want to use Tin Can activities that live outside of the LMS/SCORM Engine environment, reporting on those activities had a bit more complexity than most would like to deal with. Tin Can / SCORM parity reporting reduces this complexity. There’s another thing that we like to do here at Rustici Software, and that’s talk! If you want to upgrade to SCORM Engine 2013.2, please get in touch. Chris and Ryan are ready and waiting to talk to you. They’ll even help you with some holiday gift buying advice, should you need any last minute tips. The post A few of our favorite things… appeared first on SCORM - .

Whew! Finally recovering from the holiday festivities and the small talk that seems to come along with it. Invariably when meeting new people, the stock question, "Where do you work?" comes up. We joke around here that this can be a loaded question. Some of us provide in-depth explanations of SCORM and Tin Can and that we create the software that handles these challenging, yet valuable standards. And others (me included) usually just keep it simple — "a software company in Cool Springs". Either way, it’s not as easy to explain when talking to folks unfamiliar with the world of e-learning. So, when we heard that one of our clients, Atomic Learning, recently launched an initiative with Metro Nashville Public Schools to assess the technical skills of over 6,000 middle school students using our SCORM Engine software, we got really excited. There’s a good chance that our kids, neighbors, family and friends might have actually interacted with our software. While millions of users around the world (many that live in Nashville) end up training via SCORM Engine or SCORM Cloud through one of our LMS partners, for some reason, this one hits home a bit more.     The Learning Technology Department for Metro Nashville Public Schools uses Atomic Learning to gauge the digital literacy of students with their Tech Skills Assessment. Another assessment is used specifically for teachers that focuses on the application of technology and 21st Century Skills assessment. Parents also have access to the Atomic Learning online video library to sharpen their computer skills. So where does Rustici Software fit into all of this? Atomic Learning uses our SCORM Engine software to manage all of the complicated, backend pieces that handle the delivery and tracking of those assessments and courses. The SCORM Engine enables the Atomic Learning platform to know if users are new or returning to the courses, tracks scores and how long they spent taking the assessment, and how they answered the assessment questions. By partnering with Rustici Software, Atomic Learning not only gets best-in-class SCORM support for their platform, but it also frees up their developers and resources to focus on their core business — making technology work better in the classroom. The post Bringing it Home appeared first on SCORM - .

Last time, I cautioned you against clicking the "Delete" button. Well, some things are just too important to delete—like users. That’s why the option to delete users in SCORM Cloud is not available. It just can’t be done. But Why!? Story time! Here is a cautionary tale of why you can’t delete users: If I can’t delete them, what can I do? You do have the option to archive users. When users are archived, they no longer show up in your "People" tab. But archived users still show up in my general reports! Not to worry, we have a nifty feature in SCORM Cloud called tagging. If you tag your users, say something like "active" and "inactive", you can include or exclude specific tags when pulling reports. If you’d like to exclude users from a report, simply change their tag from "active" to "inactive." When you filter to the "active" criteria when pulling a report, only the filtered users will be represented on that report. So in summary: You can’t delete users, but you can exclude them via archiving and tagging. Next time we will share a tagging "how-to." We’ll walk through tagging and filtering users to pull customized report. Stay tuned! The post SCORM Cloud: What Now?! Deleting Users appeared first on SCORM - .

When I was younger, I would spend parts of my summer at my grandmama’s house in South Carolina. Every time she saw my brothers and me, she’d threaten to strap bricks to our heads to keep us from growing so quickly. I’ve reminisced on those moments several times over the past couple of weeks. You see, we’re growing like wildfire over here. It seems like every time I blink, we’ve added another person. We’re quickly running out of office space, but it’s really an awesome time for us. We’ve recently added three new family members to our roster and we couldn’t be happier! Ted Jones joined our Watershed sales team back in March. Along with his sweet Boston accent, Ted brings 15 years of e-learning software sales experience with him. Word on the street is that he was on The Price is Right and made it all the way to the Showcase Showdown. We don’t have video proof, so we’ll just have to take his word for it Tim Chudy also joined our Watershed sales team. Tim, also known as Chudy, is a childhood friend of Andy’s and they’ll be working closely to preach the gospel known as the Tin Can API. Chudy recently broke the record held by Jim by mocking me in exactly one day. He’s just a rule breaker like that. And last, but certainly not least, we’ve added Katie Wright. Katie is a lovely developer that’s planning on helping the guys on Dev Row make Watershed LRS even more awesome. I’ve loved Katie since our first conversation a few months back and couldn’t be happier to have another girl in the office. She’s already participated in Fancy Friday! So there you have it. At this point, I don’t even think bricks could slow down the growth spurt we’re experiencing. We might just use them to build a new office space. And somehow, I’m totally okay with that The post We’re going to need a bigger office… appeared first on SCORM - .

Working in the Cloud is supposed to make things easier. Well, if you’re working with the SCORM Cloud API, we’ve made it even easier. SCORM Cloud is built to be integrated into other applications. To let SCORM Cloud communicate with these applications, we use identifiers called "app IDs" for each of them. THEN: Lots of applications = lots of manual work. Previously, adding a new app ID required API users to log in and use the Cloud interface. Many of our API users segment their usage across their customers, so this manual step created some serious extra work for them. NOW: NO MORE MANUAL WORK! You can now use the API to create a new app ID for each new customer you bring on board. We’ve added this functionality into the API. API users, take a moment to rejoice! To ensure that managing your service is easy and safe, we’ve added a security precaution. API users will have a dedicated set of credentials (app ID and secret) for adding new app IDs. This "Master" App ID is reserved for managing your service while other app IDs are used for managing your customers. You asked, we listened. This is in response to a customer request we get quite often. And when enough people are asking for a feature, it’s important for us to deliver! The new App Management feature for the SCORM Cloud API is available today. To read more about how it works and where to get it, go here. The post Easier App Management with SCORM Cloud API appeared first on SCORM - .

With over 28 improvements and enhancements, this is the most robust upgrade for SCORM Engine since, well, ever. We’ve been working hard over the past few months to prepare for seamless installs and upgrades. We’re excited to announce that we’re ready for you, so come and get it! Here are my favorite improvements: It’s SCORM and Tin Can conformant! The new Tin Can (xAPI) Conformance Test Suite from ADL includes hundreds of tests to assess LRS conformance. Rest assured, SCORM Engine 2014 passes them all. Engine supports Recipes! It automatically indexes incoming Tin Can API statements using these Recipes’ specifications, making Tin Can even simpler. It’s even faster than before. We’ve made database improvements for increased speed and robustness. How/when can you get it? New installs and upgrades are available now! Contact us to secure your spot in line. Where can you find more information? For more top-level technical details on the new release, visit the Documentation page or contact us. The post SCORM Engine 2014.1 is Now Available! appeared first on SCORM - .