Important information for Chrome users

What is the current situation?

In an effort to improve browser performance, Google Chrome will limit the sending of information within navigation.
This behaviour change in Chrome is scheduled to take effect from version 80, which will be released predictably on February 4, 2020.

How does this affect Netex products?
It affects the behaviour of the SCORM and xAPI packages in learningCloud, learningCentral (LMS Pack) and contentCloud.
At the time of starting the training, all these packages open a pop-up window where usertracking is stored. This monitoring may be affected in the future with this new version.
In technical terms, Google Chrome has decided to eliminate the ability of scripts to make synchronous http requests during preload and download events on a page.

Under what circumstances does this situation occur?
When the student makes his training from a Chrome 80 or later browser and leaves the course by closing the browser, either click on the "navigate to the previous page" button, or click on the "reload page" button, then Chrome 80 will not send any tracking.

What are the consequences for me as a user?
Under these circumstances, in content created with learningMaker and contentCloud, both in SCORM and xAPI format, the student may lose the maximum progress of the last 60 seconds of training they have done on the page where they are.
This can translate into, for example: that the course appears as NOT passed in the LMS even if it is displayed as YES passed; that the course appears as YES passed in the LMS but does not show the last answers of the questionnaires; that does not mark the last page on which the student has been seen; that what is written in a free text field is lost; or that the last seconds dedicated by the student to the total time spent on the course, etc. do not accumulate.

What is the solution?
In the case of xAPI packages, our contentCloud department is already working on solutions to adapt its components in the coming days, we will continue to inform about these functionalities. If your content was created on other platforms (other than learningMaker) we recommend that you contact the support of your distributors.

For SCORM packages to work properly, an LMS whose SCORM player is adapted to the new Chrome 80 behaviour must be used.

• learningCloud has already updated two components within our SCORM Engine, so this problem is solved.
• learningCentral (LMS Pack) is working on updating its SCORM Engine. These changes will be effective before next February 6, 2020.

In the meantime, we recommend using the following workaround:

• The student can change this behaviour, which is set by default in his Chrome browser from version 80. To do this, he must change the value of the flag chrome://flags/#allow-sync-xhr-in-page-dismissal to Enabled.
• If you decide to use this alternative, it must be something temporary. Google has warned that in the future it will not allow to activate this parameter, predictably from the version of Chrome 82 since April 2020 (reference).