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Gabe Anderson

Word of Mouth is the Articulate blog, hosted by Director of Customer Advocacy Gabe Anderson.

Gabe loves to share his passion for all things tech and enjoys learning from Articulate customers around the world.

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Introducing the Articulate Online API

Friday, January 9th, 2009 by gabe

15 Comments


Articulate Online Some observant customers have noticed that with the December 22, 2008 update of Articulate Online, we added some key functionality to the product:

  • Added Articulate Online API functionality

What’s an API and what can it do for me?

In its simplest terms, an API, or Application Programming Interface, is technology that allows one application to communicate with another. Leveraging an API can simplify your business methods, automate data transfer, and more.

For example, do you sell the Articulate-powered training or quiz content you create? Do you use Articulate Online to deliver your training to your clients, but you’re tired of manually creating new users who purchase training via your e-commerce site?

If this scenario sounds familiar, then the new Articulate Online API is for you.

Likewise, maybe your organization uses Articulate Online to manage internal employee training in the enterprise, and you’re looking for a way to automate the communications between your Articulate Online account and your ERP.

For all you programmers, here’s a more technical description from the Articulate Online API documentation:

The Articulate Online API can be used to integrate your own web applications with Articulate Online. The Articulate Online API is a SOAP/XML web service based API that can be called from .NET, PHP, Java, or your platform of choice.

And you can review sample code for automating login here.

What are common uses for the Articulate Online API?

Although the sky’s the limit in terms of your creativity in leveraging the API, here are some common uses for the Articulate Online API:

  • Integration of user data with 3rd-party applications such as front-end e-commerce systems
  • Enhanced automation of user and group creation and management
  • Ability to automate content permissions
  • Passing login information to the application (for automated login)

As Dave notes in this forum post, one of our customers has already successfully integrated an e-commerce site with Articulate Online using the API.

How can I get the Articulate Online API?

The Articulate Online API is available now. There is an additional fee to activate API support in your account, and you can contact your sales representative to learn more.

Posted in Articulate Online

15 Responses to “Introducing the Articulate Online API”

Hi, great news. Will Articulate be providing any “off the shelf” API solutions or do we need to go to third-party providers for these to code?

Andrew Keogh  |  Posted at 04:07 am on January 12th, 2009 |  #

Hi Andrew- Yes, you’d need to work with your own developers or third-party providers to leverage the API. Trigent is a company that’s already worked with one of our customers to integrate e-commerce with Articulate Online.

gabe  |  Posted at 01:13 pm on January 12th, 2009 |  #

We have client interested in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese online learning.

How is the Articulate Studio and Online system handling the international language issue.

Please advise.

Alex Hu  |  Posted at 12:55 pm on April 21st, 2009 |  #

Hi Alex- Our products support all languages. Studio ‘09 even includes 11 language packs to customize your player templates. You can learn more here.

gabe  |  Posted at 01:28 pm on April 21st, 2009 |  #

[...] been a few months since we first announced the Articulate Online API, and we’ve already begun to see some examples of what’s possible with the [...]

6 Examples of What’s Possible with the Articulate Online API: E-Commerce & More - Articulate - Word of Mouth Blog  |  Posted at 11:48 am on April 24th, 2009 |  #

I love the idea of a self registration. Here is one thing that I don’t see, and I am curious about the possibilities. Can the self registration process also allow the user to select the group in which they belong?

Eric  |  Posted at 08:50 am on May 14th, 2009 |  #

Hi Eric – yeah, that is certainly possible with the API. On my blog (www.mozealous.com) I give an example of how to do self registration. It wouldn’t be super difficult to add the ability to chose a group as well.

Dave Mozealous  |  Posted at 10:47 am on May 14th, 2009 |  #

Is there a way to do single sign on?

Beverley Taylor  |  Posted at 02:29 pm on June 17th, 2009 |  #

Hi Beverley- Take a look at item #2 on this page about creating a self-registration page. Is that what you’re looking for?

gabe  |  Posted at 04:55 pm on June 17th, 2009 |  #

It’s somewhere in these solutions I’m sure!

Beverley Taylor  |  Posted at 07:26 am on June 18th, 2009 |  #

Is there a way to change the Articulate Online user interface to different languages? I have learners in several different countries and would like to make their learning experience as easy as possible.

Rachel  |  Posted at 01:49 pm on August 24th, 2009 |  #

Hi Rachel- that’s currently not possible, but depending on your requirements, you could essentially create your own website — in whatever languages you needed — to launch the content via your Articulate Online account.

gabe  |  Posted at 02:11 pm on August 24th, 2009 |  #

Well, with the API it would be possible to re-create most of the Articulate Online UI to support different languages, but not explicitly change the text strings or anything like that.

The only part you couldn’t recreate of the UI in the API is the reporting section.

That being said, we are looking into the possibility of making the Articulate Online user interface support localization in a future update to Articulate Online.

Dave Mozealous  |  Posted at 02:13 pm on August 24th, 2009 |  #

The AO is a step in the right direction.

However: It would be even better if I could implement the backend-API myself, so that I would not have to have my data on Articulate’s site, and pay fees for using the API.

The API url should be a pr project configurable variable.
The different API calls could also be configurable.
The XML used to read/write data should be an open specification.

James Dust  |  Posted at 02:48 am on January 26th, 2010 |  #

Thanks for the feedback, James. I’d encourage you to share all feedback via our feature request form.

The API is included free of charge with all Premium level Articulate Online plans and higher. For other plans, there is a one-time activation fee (the price depends on whether you subscribe monthly or annually).

gabe  |  Posted at 10:27 am on January 26th, 2010 |  #

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