A few months ago, we asked our support staff (which is made up of project managers, and developers, and others) to focus on one word: delight. Ultimately, we feel like making customers happy is the most important thing we can do as a company. So we reminded the crew that delight was important, and encouraged them to find a way to watch that. Through our help desk software, we’re able to ask our customers how we’re doing as we close out tickets. This was an interruption that we didn’t want to impose on our customers, but it’s pretty light, and it’s pretty important, so we went ahead with it. The data from this feedback shows up on our big board in our gathering room constantly. In a competitive office (OK, I’m competitive), scoreboards help us know how we’re doing. Of late, I’ve heard a few of the folks who work on support walking around muttering about "getting one more happy face". Why the muttering? This is our scoreboard. Every time someone answers the question, "How did we do?" it adds a new face to the top of the queue, and pushes one off the bottom. And now you, too, can see why the obsession is cranked up right now. The team is on the verge of pushing their approval rating from 98% to 99%.  Speaking generally, SCORM professionals are probably as beloved as say, tax professionals. People don’t usually get happy about SCORM. But our support crew (which includes most of the people who work here in one way or another) is killing it.  So, thanks to Joe, and Jena, and Troy, and the Thomases, and all of the other folks who work with tickets for being obsessed enough to push from 98% to 99%, even though 98% would be good enough. Thanks for being delightful. Oh, and thanks to the 100 people who have rated our support since my last ticket was rated. The blame for keeping us at 97% for a while was crushing me.  

These are busy times at Rustici Software.  Between all of the activity around Tin Can, some new employees, and a bunch of new Engine customers, we have a lot going on.  As part of a recent contract negotiation, I was asked to justify the integration cost or to do it on an hourly basis.  I said, "No," to the hourly option and here’s why: We’re always going to take a full service approach to implementations, and believe strongly that hourly setups aren’t good for anyone.  They incent us to move slowly, and encourage you to count the minutes.  So, we set a fixed fee, and take the implementation personally.

For years, every single sales call at Rustici Software was handled by yours truly. We’re selling a very technical solution to a difficult problem (SCORM), and my experience as a developer really helped me in those conversations. We’ve grown over the years, though, and having all of the sales conversations go through one person had become too much, so we’ve brought on some SCORM Cloud experts, and we’ve asked Chris to start helping out with SCORM Engine and SCORM Driver sales. We still aren’t the kind of company that does pushy sales; Chris is just here to help you find the right product and answer your questions, but even that requires expertise. On May 1st, Chris happened to come to work dressed like me, and he happened to close a SCORM Engine sale that day. He joked that, "If all I have to do to close sales is to dress like Tim, I’ll do it!" Well, the people of Rustici Software called him on his hairstyle, and in typical Chris fashion, he took the bait. "Sure, I’d shave my head if that’s all it takes." Negotiations were complete, and the bet was set. If we could close 6 new SCORM Engine deals over the course of May, Chris would shave his head to look ever more beautiful. Note: This is where you learn that Chris is not good at betting. First of all, he’s doing something we all want him to do. Second, there’s no "winning" side of the bet for Chris. Regardless… Friday, May 25th arrived, and so did the 6th new SCORM Engine contract. That, my friends, is a big month (that’s only gotten bigger since, we’re on 7 now). We’re pretty fired up about the Engine implementations and what we’ve got going on with Tin Can these days too. These are exciting times. And as for Chris? He’s a mensch.

Introducing TinCanAPI.com. My name is Andy and I’ll be your tour guide today.  Let’s go!  First stop: What is Tin Can?  Here you’ll learn what the Tin Can API is, how it works, and why it matters. This is also where we’ll showing you who the current adopters are and how they’re using the Tin Can API. You want to be a part of this group. If you’re working with the Tin Can API and want to be added to the Current Adopters page, let us know. Next stop: Developers Are you a developer interested in building a Learning Record Store or an application that sends Tin Can statements to an LRS? Are you interested in making a contribution to the Tin Can API Spec? Then you’ll want to stop by the Developers section of the site.  Here you’ll find a number of valuable resources as well as opportunities to ask us questions and ways to join in Tin Can discussions. Stop #3: Our Solutions Ready to get started working with the Tin Can API, but don’t want to go at it alone? Here’s where we’ll walk you through a few options for how we can help. Option 1:  Get a locally installed LRS with SCORM Engine + Tin Can API Are you an LMS solution and you want to support the Tin Can API? This is the place for you. Option 2:  Get a hosted LRS with SCORM Cloud + Tin Can API Do you want to get up and running fast with an LRS and you don’t want to deal with the pains of maintaining it yourself? This is the place for you. Option 3:  Create Tin Can Activities with SCORM Driver + Tin Can API Are you an e-learning content provider and you want to track and report on your content in a Learning Record Store using the Tin Can API? This is the place for you. Last stop: Tin Can Chatter There is much going on in the world of Tin Can and we want this site to be a destination for you to stay in the loop. We’ll be sharing our thoughts via the TinCanAPI.com blog, curating Tin Can news and talk via the Community Chatter page, providing quick links to past TinCanAPI.com newsletters, and sharing #TinCanAPI tweets via the Twitter page. The Tin Can Chatter section will be updated frequently, so check back often. We’ve already crammed a lot into this site, but there is much more to come.  If you ever have trouble finding what you’re looking for, let us know.  We want to help you!  If you have suggestions for things to add, let us know. Thanks for visiting and enjoy!   The post Welcome to TinCanAPI.com appeared first on SCORM.

How cool would it be if we could look inside our brains and see what we’re learning and how we’re learning it? But we can’t do it. We can’t manage learning. So what the heck are we doing with ourselves? Why are we building learning management systems and specifications that help them work better? It comes down to this: learning is so important that we have to try. We have to do everything in our power to put our students, kids, learners, employees, and volunteers in the environment that gives them the best chance to succeed. Success, in all its varied definitions, is a goal that we can all get behind. Try this exercise: If you had to guess whether or not someone was going to succeed in the task they are about to attempt, if your life depended on it, what would you want to know more than anything else? The task could be anything. Will Michael Jordan make the game winning shot? Will Sally make her sales quota? Will Chuck crash his forklift into the wall? What would you want to know? I’d want to know that Michael’s made that shot time and time again. I’d also like to know just how many times he’s practiced that shot in that situation. I’d want to know if Sally has ever had a sales quota before. I’d want to know how many books she’s read about sales techniques. I’d want to know how much research Sally has done to learn about the product she’s going to sell. I’d want to know if Chuck has crashed his forklift before. I’d want to know if he’s crashed his car. I’d want to know if he’s completed the required forklift driving training course. I’d want to know if Chuck has ever has a conversation with a mentor, perhaps one who’s had a forklift accident before. I’d want to have a deep understand of their respective experience. Is there any better predictor of future success than prior experience? We may never be able to look inside our brains and see what we’re learning, but if we can increase our understanding of experiences and their connection to success, then we’ll have accomplished something. If we can collectively build "success management systems", I think we’ll really have accomplished something. The post Inside Your Brain appeared first on SCORM - .

No, we’re not going to get into politics, there’s waaay too much of that coming to the blogosphere this year already. This post is about four more reasons I love working at Rustici Software. The Next Four Welcome to Rustici Software Andy Whitaker, Megan Bowe, Jaffer Ibrahim and Brian Miller (who as the second of his name will hereafter be referred to as "Bobby", ask Tim or I for that backstory sometime). Andy and Megan come to us to keep the snowballing momentum behind the Tin Can API moving forward. They’ve been at it for a little while already. If you haven’t already heard from them, you probably will soon. They will be active over at tincanapi.com. Jaffer and Brian bring more serious development horsepower into the mix. They’ll be coding away behind the scenes as we roll out new products that fully realize the potential of the Tin Can API. Well, come to think of it, maybe we should talk politics for a bit. We haven’t introduced "The Thomases" to you all yet. The Thomases TJ Seabrooks (the "T" is for Thomas) and Freddie O’Connell (real name "Thomas", see "Bobby" above, but he did this on his own) have been with us since the start of the year. The Thomas’s spend their days bringing #delight to our SCORM Engine implementations. As for the politics, you see TJ’s a bit of a conservative and Freddie’s a bit of a liberal. We decided to hire them both and put them in the same office just to see what would happen. It should make for a fun election season. I’m pretty fired up about the talent that’s cranking out great stuff at Rustici Software. This is really an amazing crew of people producing some phenomenal work. It just seems to get better with each batch of hires. The post Four More… appeared first on SCORM - .

All work and no play, well, that’s just not how we do things.   The first thing people usually learn about our company is that we work with e-learning standards like SCORM and the Tin Can API. The second thing that people tend to learn about us is that we have fun. Part of the fun we have at the office revolves around ping pong — singles matches, doubles matches, inventing new variations of pong (we have one called "grand canyon pong"), and keeping track of our office rankings on the "Pong Ladder". We even have our own language around the pong table…almost every score combination has its own codename. Here are a few:   10-8: we call it "Ten-eight-cious"…or "Tenacious" 7-7: we call it "un-cola"…get it? 7up? 10-4: "over and out" 0-0: we call it "7-2", because John is terrible at keeping score and has been know to call the score "7-2" when it’s really "0-0". Side note: I’m as bad, if not worse, at keeping score. 5-8: vivacious 9-9: nein! 4-2: fortitude 10-0: ten-o-cious (a very prized score) …and there are a lot more, not to mention our doubles teams’ names (The Wooves, The Kings, 7 Wonders, Engine Room, etc.) So, you see the importance of pong at Rustici Software — it’s serious business here.   We used to keep track of our rankings (the Pong Ladder) on a white board. There were some specific rules, but it wasn’t too high tech. Well, when we hired TJ, he realized that the pong ladder could be better. We have a big screen in our main meeting room/pong room that displays important company stats, and TJ had a vision for a system that we could put on that screen that would include a new pong ladder. It would keep track of all of our singles & doubles matches, our rankings, and it would use the Elo ranking system. He found an open-sourced Elo ranking system on Github, but it was written in Ruby, a language that he hadn’t used before. TJ did exactly what any of our developers would have done. He took a little time to learn Ruby so he could implement the Ruby Elo ranking system for our company. Voila! We had a new pong ladder on the big dashboard in our main meeting/pong room. It looks like this:     It’s fancy, it stores all of our game results, and it even sends Tin Can statements to our public LRS when a pong match is done. What does all of this have to do with hiring the right people?   Whenever we tell people that we’re looking for good software developers (which is all the time,) the first question we get is "what language?" We give the same answer every time. "If he/she is good enough to work here, then their familiarity with certain programming languages doesn’t matter." The story of TJ and the pong ladder is a perfect example of this, but it’s not just TJ. This is how all of our developers are. So, now it’s time for me to be a marketer: if you know somebody that fits our definition of a good developer, let us know. We want to have a conversation with him/her. The post How do you know you’ve hired the right person? appeared first on SCORM - .

I like to take care of people. It’s in my blood. I like to think that being "southern" has a lot to do with it, but most likely it comes from watching my mom take care of everyone I knew growing up. It just comes naturally to me, I guess. A few months ago, Mike and Tim (the owners of Rustici Software) asked me to head up a new project that would change the ways in which we cared for our employees. They wanted to launch a new program that would amp up our existing employee benefits package, allowing us to be able to recruit more amazing talent and give them (and existing Rusticians) an even more awesome place to work. Thus, "Jenafits" was born. You might have even seen our new #Jenafits shirts here and here… pretty cool, huh?! Jenafits is our new employee benefits program that goes way beyond the normal health, vision, and dental insurance. We want our employees to do awesome work while they are here, and lead exciting lives — free from some of the everyday stresses of life — when they aren’t. We believe in the power of a happy, less-distracted workplace and I’m here to make sure our employees stay that way. With Jenafits, our employees have access to twice-monthly house cleaning (yes, the employee’s house or apartment), a pretty cool wellness program, lawn care, and a bunch of other pretty sweet services. Rustici Software pays for these things, for our employees. They also get Jenafits on-demand, which covers everything from picking up cat food for Little Guy, to dropping a package at the post office, to planning a birthday party for our employee’s children, and everything in between. There are some companies, not many, but a few, that offer things that are similar to Jenafits (although without that awesome of a name — am I right?) Most of them have a catch — you’re expected to put in more hours at the office, since the company is taking care of so many "personal life hassles." Not here. We still work 40 hours a week; the only difference is we’re all a lot happier now. Oh, and your friend that’s the best software developer that you know…you should tell him/her about Jenafits, and send them our way. The post It’s official…Jenafits are here. appeared first on SCORM - .

The Jenafits that you pick at Rustici Software can be pretty telling. My Jenafits profile is "Wellness + Internet." It’s no secret that I like to run, bike and swim — A LOT. So, when I heard that there was a Wellness Jenafit that can help offset the costs for my gym membership, coaching fees, race entries etc., I was super-psyched. Triathlon training can get expensive! My other Jenafit, the high speed Internet + Amazon Prime membership, feeds my guilty pleasures. I call this one the "instant gratification package". Some might love this for the streaming videos etc, but not me. Now I can surf and shop at lightning speed, without leaving the living room. Many folks at Rustici will tell you that I’m a bit of a Groupon hoarder (I’m a sucker for those deals). So, a faster way to buy the latest massage deal is right up my alley. But, my online shopping habits aren’t just limited to Groupons. If I can buy it online rather than go to the store, I’m all for it. That’s where Amazon Prime comes in — free 2-day shipping? Dog food delivered to your door? All for it. So there you have it — the Jenafits that I chose. Want to learn more about any of us here at Rustici? Just ask us which Jenafits we picked. The post Our Jenafits say a lot about us appeared first on SCORM - .

If you’ve been keeping up with us over the years, you know we don’t take ourselves too seriously. For example, we have a running contest I’ll call "who can spit this (insert fruit pit/seed) the farthest". Yep, we do a lot of silly things around here. But, there are many things that we take very seriously, and one of those things is our customer support. If you’ve ever worked with our support team, you know how insanely awesome they are. If you haven’t experienced our customer support team, get ready to have your face melted off by their awesomeness. Joe, TJ, Freddie, Brian Miller, Brian Rogers, Tammy, Tim Edwards and Nathan all handle support, and together they form the mythical "Team Delight". In my humble opinion, these are some of the best support people in the world. And you know what? Our customers agree. See, we have this thing called the "Delight-O-Meter." Whenever a customer support ticket is closed out, our customers get automatically asked to let us know if they had a delightful support experience, or if they didn’t. The Delight-O-Meter keeps track of our customers’ reactions to the 100 most recently closed support tickets. Recently, there were two months in a row where the Delight-O-Meter held steady at 100%. That means that for 60 days, we delighted every…single…customer! This is a HUGE deal to us! These are the kinds of things we’re hearing from our customers — the kinds of things that make the work that we do a delight: "I was very impressed with the support I received. In fact, I was blown away as he offered to speak with me BY PHONE!" "Anyone I work with always goes above and beyond. Thank you!" "Efficient, no blabla, and quick. That’s how I like it. Thanks guys!" If you haven’t already, check out our Delight-O-Meter. We’re really proud of the work that Team Delight does — it’s amazing to see how hard they work to keep our customers happy. Doesn’t a page filled with tiny Jena smiley faces illustrate that just perfectly?! The post My love letter to our support team… appeared first on SCORM - .

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 - .

Just having a great product is not enough. Many people forget that exceptional customer support is one of the most important parts of an organization’s ongoing success. Why? It’s most often the only contact a customer has with your company. Receiving the help they need (while interacting with awesome people) encourages customers to stick around. Further, it reinforces the lifetime value of your products and increases customer loyalty. Why does it matter? We’ve had continuous, award-winning growth over the past 10 years. That’s because we love to delight our customers with excellent products and exceptional support. We hold ourselves accountable with a running tab of how our customers rate our support for SCORM Cloud and SCORM Engine. All 2517 tickets that have been opened this year are followed up with a satisfaction survey that is posted around the office and on the website. That’s why we get really excited when the Delight-o-Meter has 100 smiling Jenas in a row: What qualifies as exceptional? We looked at the global benchmark analytics from Zendesk, the help desk tool we use. The average global satisfaction rate for all Zendesk users is 83 percent. But, average is not exceptional, so we try to shoot higher. Here’s a quick look at where we stack up next to the industries in which we operate:So how do we keep our numbers close to 100 percent? 1. Giving the right help: We shoot to give customers the best answer, not just the fastest one. And when we can’t help them, at the very least, we provide a path forward. 2. Being real: "We’re two dudes in an office. You can call us on the phone, you can see our photos on the website—you can find us. We’re accessible and we want to help. People often call us and are surprised: ‘Oh, there really is a Joe?’" -Ryan Donnelly, half of the Donnelly Support Team It’s okay to want people to like you A previous boss used to tell me "people don’t have to like you, as long as they respect you." Good advice. But wouldn’t you rather have customers who respect AND like your company? A delighted customer is a heck of a lot easier to work with than one who hates your guts. So why not shoot for both? Continue to celebrate in the delight of your customers—it pays off. This is a repost from the Rustici Software Blog. The post Measure your success by the delight of your customers appeared first on SCORM - .

A few months ago, we sent out a survey to ask customers to tell us more about how they use SCORM Cloud and what other features they’d like to see. One request we heard from the survey and other conversations with Cloud customers is the ability to set an expiration date for an Invitation or a Dispatch. Well, the wait is over! We just updated SCORM Cloud so now you can set up expiration dates for any invites or dispatches. Why is this so cool? Using invitations to connect users to your courses from a link or email? Now you can set up how long they can access that course, which helps you control your costs and enforce due dates. When you create your invitations, simply add an expiration date. And if you already have invitations created, you can now add expiration dates to those existing invites. If you’re using Dispatch, you care about controlling access to your content, which might mean how many people can take your course or how long they have access to that course. Now you can set that up on the front end when creating a Dispatch so access is automatically disabled on a specific date. You can even go back to Dispatches you’ve already created and set that expiration date. No more managing this manually! Click here to get step by step instructions to get started. Still have questions? Just drop us a line and we’ll help you out. The post SCORM Cloud Feature Update - Expiration Dates Now Available! appeared first on SCORM - .

The Learning Management System (LMS) has long been synonymous with companies and training teams searching to simplify the communication and delivery of learning across an organisation. Moving forward, that won’t change, though the sophistication and functionality of these training management systems constantly evolves.

It’s not difficult, it’s just simple maths.  To increase profits you need to increase the number of delegates per course and reduce the variable costs.  There are numerous ways to market your training courses to increase delegate numbers, but how often do you take a closer look at your course resources?  On Thursday 24th July we will be holding a 30 minute webinar to do just that.  Join us:-