Debugging SCORM Packages

When content doesn't seem to be tracking properly for some of your projects, you need to start taking a look at what SCORM traffic is being sent to the LMS and compare that to the results you are seeing.  The key step here is obtaining a full log of the communication between the project and the LMS.  With some LMS systems you can get this log for each login. A good example of this is the debug log in SCORM Cloud. However, most LMSes won't provide this information. Fortunately though dominKnow | ONE courses can provide debugging details.  

You can turn on debugging for the course so it always launches, but obviously this often can be a problem as ALL people using the course will see the log and if the course is live, this can be confusing. You can then instead use the browser's inspector tool and send a javascript command of ShowDebugWindow(); to the browser and this will force a launch of the debugger for your session. This information can then be reviewed to help you, and or dominKnow or your LMS vendor diagnose what might be happening and what might be the root cause of the problem.

Take a look at this ScreenCast to see how you can turn debugging on for your course during your indivdual launch of the content. The example is using Google Chrome, but other browsers have similar options.

In some cases you may type in the ShowDebugWindow(); and it won't open.  If this is the case please review the drop down (where you picked "top") and change it to the one that has IndexAPI.html.   Once that is selected type in the ShowDebugWindow(); and you should be set.

NOTE: if you Convey select the Stub.html in the drop down.

If you are attempting to diagnose a problem and have a test site you may wish to create a course and set debugging "on" at the moment of launch.  This isn't good if your project is already launched and being used by learners, but it is really nice if you are testing out some persnickety problems.

Steps

1. Publish your project with your desired settings.
2. Download the project to your computer.
3. Unzip the package. NOTE: it is important that you actually unzip and don't just "double click" and look into the files.
   1. On Windows you can right click on the zip package and choose "extract".
4. A new folder will be created with the course contents. 
   Your folder will look something like the image below.

Now you need to locate and update the configuration.js file:

1. Double click and open the SCORMDriver folder.
2. Open the configuration.js file in your favorite text editor.
3. Locate the line
   var SHOW_DEBUG_ON_LAUNCH = false; (about line 38)
4. Change this line to read
   var SHOW_DEBUG_ON_LAUNCH = true;
5. Save the file.
6. Navigate back to the root folder of the pacakge.
7. Select all files and zip of the contents. (e.g., select all files and folder and on Windows right click and choose compress.)
   Be careful that you don't go back too many levels. You do NOT want to select the one folder and zip it, you must be at the root level (same as in the image above).
8. Upload the updated SCORM package to your LMS.

Now when you launch the package the debug window will open automatically.