2019 was a year of big changes, both within the eLearning space at large and especially for us here at Rustici. We changed our Rustici Software tagline from the eLearning standards experts to the eLearning technology experts. As we’ve watched the eLearning industry shift, we’ve noticed a few things: our customers’ eLearning programs are growing beyond standards, their eLearning technology stacks are becoming more complex, and they’re expanding their content distribution methods. From our perspective, all of these changes are opening the door to more exciting product opportunities and more challenges to solve. So, not only does our new tagline reflect a broader vision, it points our product and engineering teams in new directions.
From Rustici Engine and Content Controller to SCORM Cloud and Rustici Cross Domain, it goes without saying we’ve been hard at work implementing brand new features, functionality, and meaningful improvements across all of our products.
Let’s take a look at what shipped in 2019.
Rustici Engine
In 2019, we expanded the capabilities of Rustici Engine to support more than just standards-based content. By adding support for different content types and pre-built integrations to content libraries and marketplaces, we’re making it easy for our LMS clients to support and source more and different content options to meet the increasing demands of their customers.
Deliver and track videos, audio files, PDFs, and URLs to your learners
Import media files—MP4 video, MP3 audio, and PDF documents—into Engine and deliver them directly to learners just as you would SCORM, AICC, xAPI, and cmi5 courses. URLs are supported too, so any links can be launched and tracked just like learning content in your LMS or LXP.
Integrate with third-party content libraries and platforms using content connectors
Content connectors are readymade plugins with 3rd party libraries, like GO1, that make it easy to search and import content from those libraries directly into Rustici Engine. With a single API for your application, your learners get instant access to the learning content they need, the content is integrated right into Engine’s import, launch, and results tracking APIs, and no custom integration work is required.
Get more visibility into learner performance and course data with Engine’s reporting extension
Rustici Engine handles the import, delivery, and tracking of content in your learning application, and now, makes it easy to build reports from all of your learner data. Engine’s new reporting extension features a simple API for generating reports that can be embedded in your application’s UI (or exported as CSV or JSON for further processing and analysis).
Read more about Rustici Engine 2019.
Content Controller
Content Controller—our content distribution platform for organizations and content publishers—brings order to chaotic learning ecosystems to act as your organization’s single source of truth for learning content with built-in version control, multi-language course support, and much more. And for content publishers, Content Controller’s license management and subscription limits makes it easy to share access to your courses without giving them away.
Improved language support in Equivalents
Content Controller ships with many built-in language options and now you can manually add in any custom language right from within the application. We also made it easy for learners to quickly access courses and get on with their training by using previous language selection to launch them directly into the course. And, a new language button was added below course content so your learners can change their language preference and relaunch the course anytime they want.
Centrally manage user credentials with single sign-on
With the new SAML-based single sign-on (SSO) integration, your team can now access Content Controller through a wide variety of identity providers—including Active Directory.
See all users actions with Audit Logging
For even more transparency and control, all of your user’s actions are written to a new, separate log file that includes the user’s ID, the actions they performed, and when they did it.
Read more about Content Controller v2.2.
SCORM Cloud API v2
SCORM Cloud API v2 is a huge milestone here at Rustici Software because, for the first time ever, Rustici Engine and SCORM Cloud share the same API. This means that Cloud API users now have access to all the new functionality in Engine’s v2 API—and as a result—makes it easier to write an application that can be integrated between SCORM Cloud and Rustici Engine. SCORM Cloud API v2 introduces new flexibility for existing users of either system and removes technical hurdles for new users who want to take a “crawl, walk, run” approach.
Check out our SCORM Cloud API v2 article to learn more.
Rustici Cross Domain (RXD)
Rustici Cross Domain (RXD)—our solution that makes it easy for content publishers to share their server-side content out to their clients’ LMSs—received updates not only to features and functionality but to internal development improvements, as well.
- New support for learning standards like xAPI and cmi5
- More security-minded features like hashing personally identifiable information
- RXD 3.0 is now available as an import in Content Controller
Wrap up
2019 was a big year for all of our products and in 2020, we’re not slowing down. Exciting changes are coming the first part of the year in both Rustici Engine and Content Controller. We’ll be communicating all updates here, so make sure you subscribe to our blog for all of the latest news and updates.
Let us know if you want to see any of these new features in action. We’d love to set up a demo to walk you through them.
