Recently in Collaboration Category

Captivate 5 Essentials Training available at lynda.com #AdobeCP

By James Lockman on December 21, 2010 1:53 PM | 5 Comments | No TrackBacks

I spent a week out in California back in November working on a Captivate 5 essentials training course with Lynda.com. It's now available, and here's the description and link. Please share with your friends in education and HR who might be making online training materials and presentations.

Captivate 5 Essential Training

with: James Lockman

...is now live in the OTL:

http://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourse.aspx?lpk2=73283

Course Description:

In Captivate 5 Essential Training, author James Lockman demonstrates the core features of Captivate 5, the popular tool for authoring e-learning content such as interactive presentations, click-through simulations, and customized assessments. He shows how to import and sync PowerPoint presentations, add interactivity, and incorporate audio, video, and voiceovers. The course also includes tutorials on assessment reporting and integrating with SCORM-compliant learning management systems. Exercise files accompany the course.

Topics Include:

Touring the interface and workspaces

Building a basic project with shapes, objects, and text

Branding a presentation using master slides and object styles

Exploring user-based content at Captivate Exchange

Animating with the Timeline

Adding buttons, rollover images, and captions

Creating branching presentations

Working with templates

Recording a simulation

Creating assessments with customized questions

Setting up quiz reporting on acrobat.com

Exporting and sharing a project

Duration:

7.25 Hours

Click here to view the intro movie on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fUKkbQvVfA

Captivate Reviewer permissions problem solved for Mac users

By James Lockman on November 19, 2010 12:41 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Users of Adobe Captivate 5 can use acrobat.com or their own server to host reviews of their Captivate projects. This process is called a Shared Review and involves starting a review from an open project in Captivate, adding some reviewers, and then publishing the review document to acrobat.com. Reviewers download a .crev file and open it with Adobe Captivate Reviewer 2.0. The reviewer adds comments with the Reviewer Application and publishes them to the comment repository. Comments appear in the Comments panel directly on the timeline in Captivate 5.

On the Macintosh, this process fails because the AIR security model prevents the Reviewer application from copying files into its internal file cache. The problem manifests with the following messages:

"User does not have required privileges. Ensure that the user is part of the application owner group."

"The SWF file could not be loaded"

In order to enable the application to function correctly, you need to change permissions some folders and add yourself to the group of which the Captivate Reviewer is a member.

Based on the name in the screen shots in this tech note, it's Sanoj Kumar who deserves the credit for arriving at a solution to this issue.

The solution involves some work in the Terminal, but it misses an important point.

In order to execute the step entitled "Assign write permission to owners and groups", you need to enable the root user. In addition, you need to add the "sudo" command before the following steps in this section:

sudo chmod -R o+w Adobe\ Captivate\ Reviewer\ 2.0.app

and

sudo chmod -R g+w Adobe\ Captivate\ Reviewer\ 2.0.app

You can disable the root user when you're done with updating permissions. Thanks, Sanoj, for posting this fix. This had been a very confusing error for a lot of people.

Adobe Acrobat.com gets a makeover and new services

By James Lockman on November 5, 2010 9:43 AM | 3 Comments | No TrackBacks

Adobe introduced Acrobat.com a couple of years ago as a platform to enhance collaboration for its users of Acrobat 9. It included a file sharing feature (Share), a web conferencing feature (ConnectNow), and the ability to host document reviews from Acrobat 9 and forms data collection workflows from Acrobat 9.

It has evolved into a larger suite of services integrated closely not only with Acrobat 9 and the upcoming Acrobat X, but also with Creative Suite 5 and its CS Review service. It is a useful cloud offering in its own right, whether or not you use it with Acrobat or Creative Suite. Going beyond its document collaboration roots, it also includes the ability to become a Learning Management System repository when used with Captivate 5. I wrote a some blog entries a few months back about using Acrobat.com as a repository for eLearning with Captivate 5. And, for the basic service, it's free!

This morning, Adobe rolled out SendNow and CreatePDF, two new services that extend the value of Acrobat.com.

SendNow Service

SendNow allows you to send files to other people via email. It is similar to services like YouSendIt, but this based on the existing Acrobat.com infrastructure and has the backing of Adobe Systems' extensive cloud.

You might wonder how it's different from the existing Share function of Acrobat.com. Share is about collaboration, and when you Share a file, it ends up in the other person's Acrobat.com files when they log into Acrobat.com. It's pretty neat when you're working with several people on the same project and you want everyone to have a copy of the document.

In the case of SendNow, it delivers an email with a tracked link to the file. When the user clicks the link, they are taken to a web page where they download the file. No login, no fuss, no muss. The file remains available for seven days then disappears. You can send up to 100MB at a time, and each file can be downloaded up to 100 times. If you need larger files or longer duration, you can subscribe to the SendNow service and receive more disk space as well as other benefits.

CreatePDF Service

CreatePDF is a service that allows you to upload files and convert them to PDF. It also includes a desktop printer that will print to the service, and a capability to combine two or more PDFs into one PDF. The basic service will allow you to convert 5 files to PDF and print 5 files to PDF. To use the combination feature, you need a paid subscription.

Pricing models

The new services are available separately from Acrobat.com. It is unclear whether a subscription to Acrobat.com includes SendNow and CreatePDF, since the page hasn't been updated yet. However, since an Acrobat.com subscription has always included unlimited PDF conversions, I would imagine that the $15 per month for the Plus version of Acrobat.com would at least include CreatePDF, but I'll update this when I learn more about it.

Why Bother if I already own Acrobat?

Acrobat users are wondering about why they would need this service. Well, imagine that you're working on a shared computer that DOESN'T have Acrobat installed. Or, you're working in a library or other public terminal and there's no PDF maker. This offers you the ability to create a PDF from your native Office documents as well as the complete suite of file formats that Acrobat supports. Also, for many companies, the cost of Acrobat isn't palatable just for creating and combining PDFs, but a monthly subscription service is just the trick to increase productivity. And, of course, you get all of the other benefits of Acrobat.com to boot.

Growth is Good.

I am excited to see Acrobat.com grow. I believe that the cloud is a good move for Adobe, and while many users are just getting introduced to Acrobat.com, those of us who are old hats are liking the new features and services. I can't wait to see what's next.

Version Cue lives! in Creative Suite 5

By James Lockman on September 7, 2010 9:30 AM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

Adobe killed off Version Cue when it released Creative Suite 5. Unfortunately, I have several customers (including myself!) who continue to rely on Version Cue's integration with InDesign and InCopy, for instance. For some, it makes Creative Suite 5 untenable until a decision can be made about version control systems. Imagine our surprise, then, when Adobe released Adobe Drive 2 at Adobe Labs.

Adobe Drive CS4 enabled desktop connections to Version Cue and other Content Management Systems (CMS), but there were few CMS connectors other than the built-in Version Cue connector that ever saw the light of day. It also included connectors that allowed CS4 apps to display and manage versions within the application. In addition, it allowed checkin and checkout of files as well as version inspection from the desktop. Drive promised further integration with a broader range of content management systems, but when Adobe announced the demise of Version Cue, we all assumed the worst for Drive.

Adobe Drive 2 is software in Adobe Labs, so please be sure to back up your work frequently. Adobe calls it a Technology Preview, so consider yourself warned.

Adobe Drive 2 is the next iteration of Drive, and it does offer desktop access to both Version Cue and to other Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems through connectors. According to the CMIS for Adobe Drive Tech Note,

Adobe provides some ready-made connectors. The CMIS Connector enables basic access to servers that implement the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification. CMIS is a standard for improving interoperability between Digital Asset Management servers. It specifies a domain model, plus a set of services and protocol bindings for web services (SOAP) and AtomPub. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Management_Interoperability_Services

Installing Drive 2 is done through the Adobe Application Manager. It installs the Adobe Drive application and infrastructure for Finder/Explorer, adds Version Cue and Adobe Drive support to Bridge CS5, and enables version control support in point products. InDesign, InCopy, Photohop and Illustrator all can talk directly to projects connected through Drive 2.

To connect to a CMS, start Drive 2 and click Add Drive. While Drive CS4 would automatically sniff out Version Cue servers, you need to tell Drive 2 the address and protocol for the connection. For a Version Cue server, enter: "versioncue://servername.com" without the quotes, and click Connect.

You may want Version Cue to remember you to make future login faster. You can also choose to automatically mount the Version Cue server when your computer starts.

Once connected, you can browse existing projects in your file browser (Finder, Explorer) or Bridge CS5. You will need to login to the VC server from its web console to create new projects. While many people understand using Bridge to access Version Cue servers, let's talk about using the Finder (or Explorer).

To check out a file, select it in Finder or Explorer, then right click. Choose Adobe Drive... or Services... (Snow Leopard) then Adobe Drive... to see your Version Cue options. Choose Check Out to check out the file.

Once you have it checked out, any changes you make will be local until you check the file back in to the project.

Also, while you have the file checked out, other people who have access to the project will not be able to check it out. They need to check out a file to make changes, so you're the only one who can make changes while you have it checked out. Once you have saved your changes, check it back in to the Version Cue project. Right click on the file again to get the Drive menu, and choose Check In... If you choose Cancel Check out..., then any changes you have made to the file since you checked it out will be abandoned.

You will be asked to add version comments. This is important later when you are trying to find a specific previous version of the file. Comments will be visible when you choose Show Versions, or when users look at versions in either Bridge or CS5 applications.

You can view versions at a later date by right clicking on the file and choosing Show Versions... from the contextual menu.

While many people think that Version Cue is only useful when used with Creative Suite apps, from Finder or Explorer, you can use any file type. This means that you can manage your Word or Powerpoint files as well as your QuarkXPress and Google Sketchup files. The important thing to remember is that the workflow requires that you check out and check in files when you want to make changes. If you double click on a file from Finder, it will open without checking it out. You've then removed it from the workflow.

So, what happens when I remove a file from the workflow by opening it without checking it out? You can still make changes, but the file is read only. If you want to keep the changes in the Version Cue project, you will simply need to check it out, then save it. Easy! When you're done editing, save it and check it in, remembering to add your version comments.

You can also promote previous versions to the current version as well as open previous versions on their own. Right click on the file, then choose Show Versions... from the Drive menu. From here, you can select a version and either promote it to the current version or open that previous version without promoting it. This is very handy when there's some content in a previous version that you want to use, but you don't want the entire file. You can open the previous version, then copy and paste that older version's content to the current version.

I encourage you to try out Drive 2, particularly if you used to use Version Cue with your CS4 or even CS3 projects. Having access to your Version Cue projects in CS5 is huge for those of us with legacy content in those servers, and also for those of us who don't want to have to learn a new CMS workflow.

For those of you who want to explore other CMS, Drive 2 also includes a content transfer function that lets you move files from your Version Cue projects to another project in a different CMS or to a folder. From Drive 2, choose Admin and then enter your credentials.

It is important to remember that this is software out of Labs and that it's not considered Released software. That having been said, it is certainly useful to try Drive to regain Version Cue functionality in your Creative Suite 5 apps. Using Drive as a connector to VC for other applications is functionality that existed in Drive CS4, but not many people used it. Perhaps we can change that with Drive 2.

Adobe Captivate 5 includes Acrobat.com quiz reporting

By James Lockman on August 13, 2010 11:14 PM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

eLearning courses require a learning management system to keep track of who's taken what part of a course and who's passed or failed the assessments. What if you want to offer eLearning, however, but don't have an LMS? Enter Adobe Captivate 5 and its new integration with acrobat.com.

With Captivate 5, you can connect your assessment results to any SCORM or AICC compliant LMS and also to the Adobe Connect Enterprise LMS, now referred to as Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro in the prefs (which is interesting, since the product is now called simply Adobe Connect, but who's being picky...). New in Captivate 5 is the ability to report results to an acrobat.com account or to your own internal server. Of course, your own server would need a means of capturing the results, so you'd have to write a PHP, Cold Fusion or some other script to capture and record the results. We'll take a look at acrobat.com reporting in this post.

Take the quiz here to help me test the limits of the system. It's only four questions, so it won't take long.

Reporting to acrobat.com is easy. Open Preferences, then choose Reporting under the Quiz area. Enable reporting for this project, and then choose Acrobat.com. Click Configure... and enter your Acrobat.com credentials and the Company, Department and Course that define this project. Courses might have several parts, so you can aggregate several different assessments and projects into one course for reporting.

Once you click Save, Captivate will talk to acrobat.com and build the database to store the incoming quiz results.

The results are easy to get out with the Adobe Captivate Quiz Results Analyzer, an AIR app that comes with Captivate but which is also available for free at adobe.com. Results can be viewed directly in the Quiz Analyzer or downloaded as CSV or as raw XML. CSV can then be opened in Excel or another database, while the XML download contains a file for each response. These can be parsed individually or as a whole.

The Quiz Analyzer asks you to choose a server then enter your credentials for that server. The Quiz Analyzer can look into Acrobat.com and other servers that you configure in the preferences panel under the Options button. Once you enter your Acrobat.com credentials, it allows you to select projects by company, department and course. Once you have set these three selectors, click Generate Report, and the lessons will then appear in the detail panel below.

Double click the project to see the overall results per learner. Double click the learner to see the results per question. The CSV reports reflect the currently visible data, so you will need to export to CSV several times to get the full data for each learner. Consider using the SQLite DB file that coordinates the XML export, or importing the XML into your favorite database application or spreadsheet.

When I do my monthly talks about Adobe Connect for eLearning and Rapid Training (second Tuesdays of each month usually; check for actual schedule), I often get asked how to get the data after the fact. Now, you can use acrobat.com to get the data. Of course, a robust LMS will make it easier to manage large numbers of courses and learners, but if you're just getting started, this is a great way to get into the eLearning game.

Good News for collaboration and version control: Adobe Drive 2 comes to Adobe Labs

By James Lockman on August 13, 2010 12:55 PM | 6 Comments | No TrackBacks

Image via Wikipedia

Adobe Labs has posted a preview of Adobe Drive 2, its connector to Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems and version control systems.

While it's Windows only for now, it shows that Adobe is committed to DAM and Versioning, despite its decision not to continue development of Version Cue. When CS5 was announced, I got a lot of negative feedback from my customers who depend on Version Cue for project versioning and PDF review management. The killing of VC left them wondering where to turn for version control in the creative space as they transitioned to CS5.

While tools like Subversion and Git are popular in the software development arenas, there aren't integrated solutions for the graphics community to those repositories. Other DAMs and VC platforms exist, but their interfaces are often clunky and require several steps to check parts of a project in and out.

Version Cue provided in-app support for version inspection and reordering, allowing the user to promote a previous version to the current one without losing the current version. This would send a signal to everyone working on the project that the asset had changed, and that they needed to update it. VC also prevented simultaneous editing of graphics (Illustrator and Photoshop) and documents (InDesign and InCopy).

This quiet revelation has me itching to see the released product. I am eager to see whether it will include Git and/or Subversion connectors as well.

I wonder whether the acquisition of Day Software has anything to do with this.

Flash Player 10.1 available for mobile platforms

By James Lockman on June 22, 2010 2:11 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Adobe announced the availability of Flash Player 10.1 for mobile platforms such as Android and WebOS. #AdobeCP

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201006/06222010FlashPlayerAvailability.html

When we talk about web events and web meetings, more and more we are asked about how mobile customers can participate. While there is a Connect app for iPhone, other platforms have been lagging. Now, with FP 10.1, many of the other platforms suddenly become viable web event viewers, and the reach of web events has just exploded.

I just finished delivering a Connect session on Connect for Web Events (Recording: Webinars that Wow! with Adobe Connect), and when I mentioned that Flash Player 10.1 was announced and that smartphones would be able to participate in Connect meetings (Connect is a Flash-based platform), there was a very positive reaction.

"THIS IS HUGE!" says one attendee (his capitals).

"Did you REALLY say that smartphones could attend Connect meetings?" asked another. "Yes, I did," was my reply. "WOW!" came the response.

Other responses were equally enthusiastic. While the Connect app for iPhone has been available for months, there is a huge pent-up demand for other smartphones to be able to attend web meetings, and with Flash Player 10.1 in the mobile marketplace, Adobe Connect becomes more relevant than ever before.

Using Contribute CS4 with Self-Hosted Movable Type Blog

By James Lockman on September 30, 2009 6:31 AM | 2 Comments | No TrackBacks

For many years, Adobe Contribute has been able to connect to commercially available popular blogging platforms such as Blogger or TypePad. I use Movable Type on my own server, and have wanted to get this going for some time.

There are a couple of configuration settings that make this all pretty easy, although the answers as to how to set them is not in one place. This entry serves as the one place.

First of all, you need to have Contribute CS4 installed, and your Movable Type blog needs to be up and running. You will need administrative access to the blog and to the paths where the cgi lives. With these in hand, we need to gather some information before making the connection.

Open your Movable Type administration panel and click on your name in the upper right hand corner. This will open your profile.

Having opened your profile, scroll down to the Preferences and click the reveal button to the right of the web services password. Write this down or copy it to your clipboard, as you will need it to connect to your blog.

Now, it's time to fire up Contribute. From Contribute, choose Contribute>My Connections... and select Create. Next, choose Blogs as the type of connection, and enter the URL for your blog.

You can also browse to your blog, which will open a little web browser for you. Browse to the top level of your site, and then click OK.

Click Continue to enter the connection settings, and this is where that password will come in handy. On this screen, you need to enter your userid, the web services password (not your regular login password), and the access point path.

The access point path is the path to where the Movable Type cgi files live. In my installation, I simply installed the entire MT folder in a folder on my web site, and created a second folder for the posted blog entries. This is pretty common, as most of us don't have access to the system-wide cgi folder. The item that's important is the file called mt-xmlrpc.cgi, which is the bit of glue that binds Movable Type and Contribute together. Having entered these three items, you are done. Click Finish to create the connection.

Having made the connection, you are ready to add or edit entries. There are some preferences you might want to set before you do, however.

Choose Contribute>Preferences and then select the Blog Defaults panel. You can choose to automatically allow comments and trackbacks here, and to create a new entry when you click the "New" button.

Under the Tagging panel, you may want to put the tags at the bottom of your entries so as not to clutter up the top. Contribute will automatically push your tags to the repositories you specify in the panel. Having made these changes, click OK.

Now, you're ready to blog with Contribute!

To create a new entry, click New Entry, or choose an existing entry from the menu at the right of the screen. This isn't about how to use Contribute to edit blog entries, so I'll leave that to you and your favorite training source.

I will say, though, that I enjoy seeing the blog entry rendered with the CSS and template of the blog. I also like the asset manager in Contribute, which consists of adding a picture to your blog entry, and Contribute will manage the rest. You can also use that built-in browser to browse to pages when adding links to your blog. That's handy when you can't remember the precise url, but you know the site that you want to reference.

If you need to set the entry aside, click Save for Later and then it will be available for you later to pick up where you left off. When you're ready to publish the entry, click Publish, and Contribute does all of the publishing for you.

Enjoy!

Dimdim not quite there yet

By James Lockman on September 12, 2009 10:47 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I spent some time with DimDim the other day. It's a low cost online collaboration platform based on Flash. It hopes to compete with Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro or Webex, but in my opinion, it's not ready for prime time. They have a good start, though, and I can see lots of possibilities for the platform. Education users have glommed on to it for its price point, which is low. As to whether it will ever be taken seriously by enterprise users remains to be seen.

Where's my Acrobat Review Tracker? A problem and a resolution.

By James Lockman on September 1, 2009 8:34 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Last week while working with a customer while riding the Amtrak Downeaster between Boston and Portland, Maine, I created a Version Cue CS4-based PDF review. This process has always worked great in CS3 and Acrobat 8, and this was my first attempt with Acrobat 9 and Version Cue CS4. Platform disclaimer: ALL MAC Leopard, CS4 & Acrobat 9. All up to date as is the OS. Network is DHCP on the train.

The review creation process went without a hitch, and I was able to log into the VersionCue server, open the PDF in the browser, add comments to the PDF, and exit the browser. I then opened the PDF again in the browser, logged in as another user, applied some more comments, and exited the browser. When I tried to open the PDF from the VersionCue management console (open PDF in Acrobat is the button), however, the PDF opened in the browser and I saw no comments.

Intrigued, I tried to see whether the review had been added to my Tracker, and when I opened the Tracker, I was presented with a dialog asking if it was OK for Acrobat to use the keychain item related to the VC server. I agreed, and that's the last I saw of the Tracker.

Now, the Tracker won't start up. Occasionally I got these keychain messages from Acrobat, so I assume that the Tracker was still trying to connect to the VC server, but I can't see the Tracker. Well, having uninstalled and reinstalled Acrobat in hopes that the Tracker might reset itself, and after discovering that Acrobat conveniently remembers all of the reviews with which it is associated even after a reinstall, I dug around and found the following file on my Mac:

~user/Library/ApplicationSupport/Adobe/Acrobat/9.0_x86/Collab/Workflows

I found the browser-based review that was causing the problems and changed the server ip address to localhost, where the VersionCue server resides regardless of its DHCP situation. Restarting Acrobat, though, and Tracker would still not appear.

I had resolved to confuse the hell out of Adobe tech support, when another idea occurred: join another shared review (not browser-based review like VersionCue). So, I joined another shared review, and Acrobat opened and voila! the Tracker reappeared, but then died after I tried to delete the dead review from the list. Thinking more about this, I restarted Acrobat and disabled "Show Notification inside Acrobat" in Preferences>Tracker, and opened the Tracker. Now, the Tracker did not try to connect to the bad server, and I was able to try deleting the bad browser-based reviews. Selecting one of the bad browser-based reviews, I clicked the trash can and got this handy message:

Without any guidance from the interface, I decided to go for broke and chose "OK." It was the right choice. The bad Browser-based review is gone, and my Tracker is back.

Lessons learned: don't try to start a browser-based review on a train.

« Cloud Computing | Main Index | Archives | eLearning »

Recently in Collaboration Category

Captivate 5 Essentials Training available at lynda.com #AdobeCP

Captivate Reviewer permissions problem solved for Mac users

Adobe Acrobat.com gets a makeover and new services

Version Cue lives! in Creative Suite 5

Adobe Captivate 5 includes Acrobat.com quiz reporting

Good News for collaboration and version control: Adobe Drive 2 comes to Adobe Labs

Flash Player 10.1 available for mobile platforms

Using Contribute CS4 with Self-Hosted Movable Type Blog

Dimdim not quite there yet

Where's my Acrobat Review Tracker? A problem and a resolution.

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