Problem with closing & resuming SCORM 2004

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1

Hi all,

I’ve exported a course built in the new Evolve as SCORM 2004 and uploaded it to our LMS, Docebo.

We’re seeing an issue with tracking on mobile. The course only seems to save/track properly if the learner uses the Exit course button enabled in the course settings.

The bigger issue is that the Exit course button doesn’t appear to properly close the SCORM package on mobile. This happens both with:

the built-in Exit course button from the course settings
a manually added button element inside the course

On desktop, the behaviour seems to work as expected, but on mobile the button saves progress without properly closing/exiting the SCORM window.

In the old version of Evolve, we were previously able to get this working by using custom export settings and enabling advanced tracking. With the new Evolve, we can’t replicate that as the customer export option has been removed.

Has anyone else experienced this with new Evolve + SCORM 2004 + Docebo, particularly on mobile? Is there a recommended export/tracking setup, or a known limitation with the Exit course button on mobile?

Any advice would be appreciated.

2

Hi @smiffey93 well that’s odd but speaking from a point of view of 25 years experience dealing with SCORM it’s not unusual to find issues like this on some Learning Management Systems.

The only significant difference between the exit routine in Legacy Evolve and New Evolve is that the ‘exit course’ button in New Evolve now explicity calls the SCORM API Terminate function before attempting to close the course window/tab. In Legacy Evolve it just closed the course window and relied on the browser’s unload/beforeunload events to trigger a call Terminate - however Safari for iOS doesn’t actually fire any kind of event when a browser window/tab is closed so this could lead to some data loss on exit… hence the change.

That said, the setup for when you just close the browser window/tab (instead of using the exit course button) is unchanged from Legacy Evolve so, as long as you’re not running the course in Safari for iOS it should still work fine (though I’d still recommend learners use the Exit Course button just to be sure).

My best guess at this point is it’s likely due to how Docebo loads the course in the browser on mobile - it might be doing so in a way that this ‘close window/tab’ code:

top?.window.close?.()

Isn’t working properly.

Other than ‘advanced tracking’, what other custom export settings were you using in Legacy Evolve? I can’t think of any reason why ‘advanced tracking’ would make any difference - that setting only changed what data was saved to the LMS; it had nothing to do with how it saved that data or how it exited.

Obviously I don’t have access to an instance of Docebo to test from, are you able to provide this?

Also, can I just check - when you say ‘on mobile the button saves progress without properly closing/exiting the SCORM window’ - what ‘mobile’ are you referring to? iOS? iPadOS? Android? And what browser are you using?

3

Hi Matt,

Thanks, that’s really helpful.

A few clarifications from our side that are probably important.

The issue is specifically happening in the Docebo Go.Learn mobile app, rather than in a standard mobile browser. We use a white-labelled version of the Go.Learn app, and we’re seeing the same behaviour on both iOS and Android.

The desktop/browser version appears to behave as expected.

The current behaviour is:

  • Desktop/browser: suspend and recall appear to work as expected.
  • Go.Learn app on iOS: suspend / recall only works reliably when the Exit Course button is pressed.
  • Go.Learn app on Android: same behaviour.
  • When the Exit Course button is pressed in the app, progress saves, but the course does not close/exit cleanly.

Just to clarify the Legacy Evolve setup, we were using:

  • Advanced tracking
  • Use Alternate Window Close Method
  • LMS exit status set to Auto

The Exit Course button didn’t properly close the course in Legacy Evolve either, so that part is not completely new for us. The key difference is that Legacy Evolve still suspended and recalled learner progress correctly. Learners could leave the course through the app/LMS flow and later resume from the correct place.

In New Evolve, suspend / recall only seems to work reliably if the learner uses the Exit Course button. If they exit via the Go.Learn app’s normal close/back flow, the course does not appear to recall progress correctly.

That creates the blocker for us:

  • The only reliable way to save/recall progress in the app appears to be the Exit Course button.
  • However, the Exit Course button then does not actually exit/close the course cleanly in the app.

I also found your November 2025 post on SCORM improvements in New Evolve, where you mentioned that SCORM 2004 should have full save/restore support, with bookmarking based on the last thing viewed. Based on that, should New Evolve SCORM 2004 be expected to save/restore suspend data during normal learner exit behaviour, or is full suspend/recall dependent on the Exit Course button being pressed?

A couple of questions from our side:

  • Could the removal of the Legacy options “Use Alternate Window Close Method” and “LMS exit status: Auto” affect this behaviour in Docebo Go.Learn?
  • Is there an equivalent setup in New Evolve for suspend / recall without relying on the floating Exit Course button?
  • Is there any debug output or logging we can enable to confirm whether suspend data, lesson location, commit, and terminate are being called when exiting through the Go.Learn app?

Unfortunately, we’re not able to provide direct access to our Docebo instance for testing. We can provide screenshots, screen recordings, the exported SCORM package, and exact test steps if that would help.

Thanks,
Josh

4

Well I think that’s going to be the cause of it. My experience of LMS mobile apps has rarely been great, specifically in that:

  • issues like this are common
  • debugging is not possible (except for the app’s devs maybe)
    To the point that Evolve does not officially support third party mobile apps like this (that said I will still do my best to help, just be aware I’m very limited in how much I can help)

To answer your questions:

It won’t be LMS exit status[1] - but it could perhaps be the setting “Use Alternate Window Close Method” that was allowing it to work in Legacy Evolve. More on that below.

It is already equivalent. As I mentioned previously the ‘exit routine’ in New Evolve when closing the course by simply closing the browser window/tab is essentially identical to that of Legacy Evolve.

Unfortunately there is not.

If you can share the exported SCORM package with me, I can import that into my local developer’s version of Evolve to see if modifying it to use the Legacy Evolve “Use Alternate Window Close Method” makes any difference. Obviously I would then need to send that back to you to test since I have no way of testing it on Docebo myself.

I did find some documentation regarding SCORM compatibility with Go.Learn here - which, quite honestly, I find somewhat confusing. Specifically where it says that you should not use an exit button within the app but instead:

The FINISH command must be sent by the SCORM before the actual closure, and in general the package must not rely on the fallback mechanisms of the LMS or the mobile app.
→ This can be done by inserting, for example, a last courtesy slide which says “Congrats! You have finished the course”, but sending the FINISH command during the transition from the previous slide to this last courtesy slide.

That would be feasible if it is expected that the learner should only exit the course when it is completed - but doesn’t explain how the course should be exited if the learner hasn’t completed the course and wants to exit so that they can resume and complete it at another time..!

  1. The default behaviour of a SCORM 2004 LMS when a course is relaunched after having previously been completed is to wipe all tracking data; the ‘suspend’ option of LMS Exit Status allows you to prevent this ↩︎

5

You can either DM me with a link the scorm .zip file - or a link to the course itself within Evolve - though note I would also need to know what the ‘organisation’ name of your instance is (the first part of the Legacy Evolve URL).

Equally please feel free to contact Evolve Support and they can help out with that.