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Note: Unless otherwise noted, the FAQ information provided in this document applies to CMS Pro for ToolBook 6.5 and ToolBook 7.1 (both Assistant and Instructor).
Can I manage
non-ToolBook courseware in CMS Pro?
The CMS product line is designed to work hand in glove with courses developed
using ToolBook. When the ToolBook courses are running, they are directly linked
to CMS to gain operational benefits. As a result, the scoring and recording
of evaluations and detail logging are seamless, as are course assignment and
results tracking.
The CMS Pro product does have the capability to manage both ToolBook and non-ToolBook courses and course modules. For example, you may have a course of several modules and some of the modules are ToolBook-based and the others are in other file formats such as PowerPoint, Word, PDF, or HTML. CMS Pro will guide students through those various modules, launching the application associated with the file when necessary and recording that the file was or was not completed. This is a powerful feature for increasing the flexibility the trainer has for material presentation.
The one limitation is that there is no built in way to gather evaluation results from non-ToolBook modules to post to the student records in CMS. This is because the integration that exists between CMS Pro and ToolBook course modules does not exist for other types of course modules.
Does CMS Pro
itself consist of ToolBook books?
Yes. Most functionality in CMS Pro is provided by ToolBook books, written
with the OpenScript programming language. The exception is the reporting system,
which is provided by a third-party product named R&R Report Writer.
How many users
can simultaneously run CMS Pro?
CMS Pro is designed to handle approximately 30 students who are actively
using the Student Access application. We do not recommend extensive use of the
Administration application while several students are logging in and taking
courses as performance may be adversely effected. A dBase IV ODBC driver manages
read/write access to the database files. CMS Pro adds addition functionality
in its OpenScript code to help with performance and minimize network conflicts.
How many users
(students) can I manage in CMS Pro?
Although we have not imposed a fixed limit to the number of users you can
add to the CMS Pro database, the upper limit depends on your system and network
performance. Most CMS Pro customers successfully manage up to 2000 users.
Note: The CMS Pro CS version has much higher capacity and higher speed. This version uses Microsoft SQL Server or PostGreSQL as the back-end database and Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) as the client-side data query mechanism. This combination will provide you with the ability to maintain over 100,000 users. Please see the Product Comparison sheet for more details.
What kind of
support is provided/available? Are there any additional costs involved?
Included in the price for CMS Pro is 90-days of email-based technical support.
We typically respond to inquiries within one business day. After 90 days, contact
us to extend this support period for an additional fee. We also provide custom
development and consulting upon request.
Does CMS Pro
run on Windows 95/98? Windows 2000 & XP?
Your client machines and database server (which can also be a client machine
on a peer-to-peer network) can be any combination of these versions of Windows.
In addition, since ToolBook is still essentially a 16-bit application and CMS
Pro is written in ToolBook, you can also run CMS Pro under Windows 3.1.
Note: If you have read on the click2learn.com (Asymetrix) Web site about a problem with the CMS running on a version of Windows, that information pertains to CMS Plus only. CMS Plus (an earlier version of the CMS product, which is still available for single-user and peer-to-peer LANs) does not work properly under some Windows configurations. The reason is due to the use of the Paradox Engine. CMS Pro, on the other hand, uses ODBC to read/write to dBase IV database files and thus does not share the limitations of CMS Plus.
If I have special
course management needs where I require custom programming, is Vision Infosystems
available to help?
Yes. In addition to producing and enhancing the CMS product line, we also
provide custom development services. Examples of custom programming we've provided
for other clients include addition of database columns, data import and conversion
utilities, and changes to the user interface.
Is the OpenScript
source code available for CMS Pro?
Yes. Please contact us if you are
interested in obtaining the fully scripted version of the product. There is
an additional cost for the source code and you must agree to a special distribution
license.
How does CMS
Pro provide data and screen access security?
First, each user of the Administration and Student applications must provide
a login and a password to gain access. The exception to this is for users of
the Student application who login as a "Guest"; the system allows
guest users to launch only courses designated as open-enrollment.
When you first build the CMS Pro database files, a "superuser" account is provided. Once logged-in, this superuser is able to create other users and students. For each user added, the superuser can establish privileges for the user. See the CMS User Guide for more information about the privilege levels.
What database
file format does CMS Pro use to maintain records?
CMS Pro uses the dBase IV database file format. This file format provides
the capability for multiple users to simultaneously read from and write to the
database files. dBase data is accessible with several third-party applications,
such as Microsoft Access. However, you do not need a separate database management
product to use CMS Pro.
If you are upgrading from CMS Plus (which uses the Paradox file format) then you will want to use the conversion program that we provide (Plus2Pro.tbk)that converts the database format from Paradox to dBase IV.
Can I create
my own reports? What product is needed?
CMS Pro uses R&R Report Writer (SQL Edition, version 6.5) from Liveware Publishing, Inc.
You may purchase this R&R from the manufacturer or third-party software
outlets and create your own reports or modify the reports we provide. Once you
have created or modified reports, you can make the reports available from one
or more screens within CMS Pro.
Is there a version
of CMS Pro that uses Microsoft SQL Server in place of dBase or Paradox for database
management?
In 2000, we released a version of CMS Pro (called CMS Pro CS)
that uses Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 or later, or PostGreSQL as the server database. This version of the
CMS is designed for ToolBook 7.2, 8.1 and 8.5/8.6 since it utilizes the OLE Automation
capabilities in these versions of ToolBook. Please see the Product Comparison
sheet for more details.
What is the
basic process for creating courses and assigning courses to students?
- Start a new ToolBook book or open an existing course book.
- At Author level, open the CMS Pro Catalog (cmspro.wbk) and add necessary objects
to your course book. For example, you can add buttons to navigate to the next
and previous module in a multi-book course. You might also want to add the "Return
to CMS" and "Mark as Completed" buttons on the last page of the
last course module. See the CMS
Pro User Guide for more information regarding the CMS Pro Catalog objects.
- Open the CMS Pro Administration application (admin.exe).
- Select Courses from the main menu and proceed to add the course and its modules
to New Course screen.
- Return to the main menu and choose Assignments. Proceed to assign the course
to one or more students or student groups.
How can I make
a backup of my database file? How do I restore a backup?
The CMS Pro database consists of several individual files, which typically
reside in a directory accessible on a network. You should make a backup of all
files in the directory. All connections to the database files must be terminated
before a successful backup can be performed. To be sure no users are connected
to the database files, be sure users shut-down the admin.exe and student.exe
applications. To restore a backup, copy all backup files to the same directory
where they were backed-up.
For dBase: The files use the following extensions: dbf, dbt, and mdx.
For Paradox: The files use extensions such as db, mb, px, x01, y01, and others.
Does CMS Pro
support books running under the Neuron runtime version of ToolBook? How about
books exported as HTML or DHTML?
Neuron provides the ability to run native ToolBook applications in a browser
over the Web. However, books running under Neuron cannot write to remote file
locations, and thus cannot communicate with CMS Pro to read from or update the
database files.
Likewise, books exported from ToolBook as HTML or DHTML do not provide the necessary mechanisms to connect to external Windows libraries (DLLs) and therefore will not work with CMS Pro.
Why are the
scripts unavailable in the Administration module in CMS Pro?
We offer a separate, fully-scripted, version of CMS Pro for those customers
who wish to modify the source code in the Administration application. For most
customers, CMS Pro provides the capabilities needed to manage their courseware
distribution and tracking. Also, CMS Pro utilizes a third-party grid control
(Spread20.vbx from FarPoint Technologies) to display various information in
rows and columns with the Administration module. Thus, a customer who wishes
to modify the source code in the Administration module must have a separate
license to save changes to a modified version of the admin.exe file.
While authoring
a course book, I select the "Mark as Completed (Conditional)" button,
but the Extended Properties button does not become enabled. How can I get it
to enable?
The Mark as Completed (Conditional) button, which is located in the CMS
Pro Catalog (cmspro.wbk) requires that a file named cmscomp.spb be in the same
directory as cmspro.wbk. In addition, we recommend that you copy all of the
catalog-related files provided in CMS Pro to the same directory where the ToolBook
catalog files reside. Otherwise, ToolBook may lose track of where the cmscomp.spb
file resides and will be unable to enable the Extended Properties button. The
reason for this is that ToolBook assumes that all of your catalog-related files
are in one directory. Thus, when you open a catalog, it writes the catalog directory
to an .ini file and expects to find the .spb files in that same directory. As
a result, if you add an object from the CMS Pro catalog to your book and then
add open a different catalog in a different directory, the .ini entry is now
set to a directory that is different than the one where cmscomp.spb resides.
That explains why the Extended Properties button does not become enabled when
you highlight the Mark as Completed (Conditional) button -- because ToolBook
no longer knows where to locate the file.
Which question
"widgets" can I use in my course modules to maintain compatibility
with CMS Pro?
CMS Pro supports all of the question widgets in the ToolBook catalog, including
multiple-choice, true/false, fill-in, match items, and all others. The only
requirement is that you enable scoring (using the ToolBook Extended Properties
editor for the questions) for the questions you wish to be tallied in the score
and maximum score that is sent to CMS Pro.
Can I administer
CMS Pro from a remote site, from a system not directly connected to the network?
Yes. Through the use of Symantec's PC Anywhere or similar product, you can
connect to any client machine where the CMS Pro Administration application is
installed, launch the program, and perform administration duties from your remote
location. This allows you, for instance, to manage several CMS Pro databases
(each of which requires a separate licence) to distribute courses, collect activity
data, etc.
What happened
to tb60c.sbk? My courseware requires this system book but I can't find it.
Tb60c.sbk is a ToolBook system book that is required by CMS Plus, but not CMS
Pro. In CMS Pro, we moved all functionality provided in tb60c.sbk to a new system
book named cmspro.sbk. All functionality in the original system book is now
in cmspro.sbk. However, some customers wrote special code in their course books
to determine whether the book was running in the CMS by checking the sysBooks
property for the existence of tb60c.sbk. Our recommendation is to create a blank
tb60c.sbk and bind it to cmspro.sbk. This will make tb60c.sbk available if cmspro.sbk
is loaded, which is the case when a user launches a course book from the Student
Access application.
I'm upgrading
from CMS Plus to CMS Pro. How do I convert my data to the new database format?
Download Plus2Pro.tbk from the Downloads
section of this site, open it in ToolBook, and fill-in the necessary details
about the source and destination database files. When the utility complete the
conversion, your data will be accessible with CMS Pro.