The following tips will help you avoid unexpected behavior when creating, sharing, and publishing SmartTutor 360 projects.
Create, Edit, and Publish Projects on Your Local Hard Drive
Working with Project Files
Always save and publish SmartTutor 360 projects on your local hard drive (typically your C: drive). The default save location for SmartTutor project files (*.tutor) and published output is the Documents\SmartTutor360 Projects directory on your computer unless you change it.
In addition, your slide templates (*.tutortemplate) or symbol package (*.tutorsymbol) will be save default in Documents\SmartTutor360 Templates (for Windows).
Working on a network drive or an external USB drive can cause erratic behavior due to latency. For example, it could cause file corruption or prevent you from saving changes.
Working with Course Assets
Developers often keep course assets (pictures, videos, audio files, documents, etc.) on a network drive or USB drive. And in most cases, that’s fine. However, if you see unusual behavior after importing an asset from a network drive or USB drive, the asset may have corrupted as it transferred to your computer. If that happens, delete the asset from your course, copy the original asset to your local computer, then import it again.
Here are some examples of strange behavior that can occur when an asset is corrupt:
- The asset is blank, distorted, or unresponsive. For example, an image looks like an empty box, or a video refuses to play.
- SmartTutor 360 says the file format isn’t supported even though it is.
- The preview feature doesn’t work. It loads a blank slide or doesn’t load at all.
- Resources that you attach to your player are missing when you publish.
Save, Version, and Back Up Projects Frequently
Save your work often. The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S is the fastest way to save. Do it so often that it becomes muscle memory. You’ll be glad you did.
Create versions of each project during its development cycle so you can go back to earlier versions if necessary. Just go to the File tab on the SmartTutor 360 ribbon and choose Save As, then give your project a slightly different file name. For example, you might make a new version at the end of each workday and add the date to the file name so you can identify it.
Versioning is also a good way to back up your work.
Send Projects to Other Developers When You Need to Collaborate
If you need to share a project file with another developer, we recommend zipping it first. Then you can share the zipped file via email, external drive, network drive, etc. Remind your collaborators to save the zipped file to their local hard drives and fully extract it before opening the project.
Host Published Courses Online
Viewing published courses on your local hard drive or a network drive isn’t supported. Security restrictions in these environments can cause some features to fail.
To avoid unexpected behavior during playback, upload your courses to a web server or LMS.
The published output for a SmartTutor 360 project includes multiple files and folders. For your published course to work properly, these files and folders must remain in the same organizational structure when you upload them to a server.
Optimize File Paths and Naming Conventions
Be sure the file paths to your projects and published output are under the 260-character limit that Microsoft Windows imposes. Since the publishing process adds characters to the file path, your published output will be incomplete if it exceeds 260 characters.