Adobe Captivate 2: Tracking Quiz Scores via Email

If you create a quiz in Capitvate, the most efficient thing to do if you want to track the scores is to post the quiz to an LMS (Learning Management System). But what if you cannot afford an LMS, or simply don't want to use one?

Instead of using an LMS to manage the Quiz results, you can instruct the Quiz to send the scores to an email address. You will learn how in the steps below. However, if you use this technique, tracking the results may not be so easy.

Here's how to set up a Quiz to send the results in the form of an email:

1. Choose Project > Quiz Manager
2. On the Reporting tab
3. Select Enable reporting for this project
4. Select E-mail
5. Type your e-mail address into the text field
   
   
   
   Click OK

If you want to include a subject line and/or automatically fill in the body of the email, you can type the following:

[email protected]? subject=Captivate% 20Presentation&body=Body%20goes% 20here&[email protected]

Provided your email client supports the tag, the email that is generated would have the following information pre-filled:

To: [email protected]

CC: [email protected]

Subject: Captivate Presentation

Body: Body goes here

Now for the tracking issue:

The following question came from P. Geisler, one of our fellow subscribers to this newsletter. We're looking for your feedback/experience so please send your comments to me.

Question: I'm wondering if anyone has found a solution for tracking course completion or test scores from Captivate without using an LMS.

• The email system works beautifully if you're only tracking a few dozen questions, but what do you do if you're trying to track assessment scores (or even just course completion) for several hundred people. 
• The Adobe Developer Center has an article on using Cold Fusion to create a database that interfaces with Captivate for tracking results.  Great if you're familiar with this powerful software but I'm not and don't have the time to learn.
• QuestionMark Perception is not within our budget to purchase
• We use Oracle/PeopleSoft's HR system, which includes training registration and tracking.  It's AICC and SCORM compatible but, unless I can get the test results into a database such as Excel or Access, to do an upload, I have no way of getting the information into the system.

Comments

[steve jones]

I'm finding the email results function doesn't work.
It won't work at all if you publish the quiz to a Breeze server.

When I tried publishing to a web server, I got it to report results in firefox, but not IE. I had a colleague test and they got the opposite result.

BTW, I'm testing this function using the QuizMe.cp I got on the CD with your Captivate book (which has been very helpful).

Any tips you can share to make this work? From reading the Adobe Captivate forums, I'm not sure if the email quiz results really works.

[Peter J]

I do wish people would stop reporting this as working. Sending scores via email doesnt work with Captivate 2

[K J Berger]

When I try this (with 8 questions) Captivate attempts to send an email for each question. How do I get it to send only the final results and not the individual results?

Kellie

[Dom]

Thanks for the trick

Via Cp 3 I still have 2 problem:

Captivate automatically adds subject=Results: date of the day is the subject field
and the results of the quiz/test in the content

However, I don't want them to appear (only want to see how many students have taken the test).

Any idea how I can solve that?

Tx

[Erica]

Hello
I need to give the user the ability to email their score to the trainer. The email is generated but there is no information in the body or attached ( I tried both options). My test is interactive (all click boxes). not quite sure why this isn't working.

Erica

[Kevin Siegel]

When testing, publish the project and open the HTML file. If you test the email attachments via Preview > Project, you will not get the attachment.

Kevin

[swtsvn]

hi
is there a way to get the quiz data to access/excel database ?

[Kevin Siegel]

Not from within Captivate. However, if you can get the results sent from your users via email as attached ATT files, I have created a utility called CaptivateMyData that will parse the data from Captivate ATT files into Access, Excel or text files.

You can learn more about CaptivateMyData here: http://www.iconlogic.com/CaptivateMyData.htm