Articulate Storyline is a learning content creation platform. It provides prebuilt and customizable content, along with gamification capabilities. Articulate emphasizes user-friendliness, including mobile accessibility. It is offered on a perpetual license.
$1,398
Saba TalentSpace
Score 7.8 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Halogen Software offers a cloud-based talent management suite that includes recruiting, performance management, learning and development, succession planning and compensation programs. It is optimized for mid-sized businesses.
Halogen works for a broad based company that has different levels of technical expertise - it has complexity for those that choose and it has simplicity for those that need some more context.
In an office where you're planning to do a large amount of module-based training, Articulate Storyline will prove useful. A consideration to make, however, is whether your team members focused on training design will have the capacity to learn the software enough to create interesting and effective training modules. The basic functions can be simple, but the more advanced capabilities of the software take considerable effort to master and employ to create the more visually appealing presentations/modules you see in much of the promotional materials. If you have a small training team (or even without anyone dedicated specifically to training and development), Storyline is not a wise choice as the cost and effort required to fully make use of the software would be far too much of a commitment to make it worthwhile.
I think it's a good platform for tracking and monitoring goals, feedback, and development. We don't use the 1:1 meeting feature, however, I can see how that would be valuable for many organizations. I do like that it is very customizable, however, that also presents problems in that sometimes forms and/or processes can be a bit challenging to create easily and quickly.
Storyline integrates with the Canvas LMS fairly seamlessly. There have been a few glitches, but for the most part, the interactions we have created will play directly in the Canvas LMS.
Storyline is great for creating short drag and drop interactions for self-reviews or even graded assignments. Its many options for quizzes such as "answer reveal" or using tabs help the student get a different perspective on the content rather than just an "A, B, or C" answer.
Storyline is great for tutorials or training sessions. There are many options to help guide the learner (or employee) through a process. it is not just linear, but you can branch the slides based on the answers. A great way to engage the learner or employee.
1:1 agendas are easy to create, add comments to and prompt excellent conversation flow on the topics that truly matter to the manager and the employee.
The system can be easily customized to reflect your company's language and culture. We did this in several areas of the platform (goals, development, learning), and it made a world of difference in the understanding and adaptation of our users. One example is that in each learning module, we added 3 questions in the course description so that managers would be automatically prompted to ask to follow up / learning transfer questions when their employees enroll and take a learning course.
Halogen support is outstanding. Any question I have had has been answered upon the first contact or within 24 hours.
I wish that you could customize the UI ribbons to bring features you use frequently to the front and to hide options you rarely use.
It would be great if there was a way for non-technical collaborators (SMEs, management, etc) to be able to open a *.story file directly and provide comments. You currently have to publish the course, load it to the LMS, update the LMS, and then hope that users can find it in the LMS. A Storyline Viewer/Previewer standalone application would be awesome.
The price is too high for freelancers to purchase and use. I no longer contract and work exclusively for the firm, but even with our resources, the high price limits the number of licenses available to use.
My organization does not use all of the functions/modules that Halogen offers, but I find that those modules still appear on the Halogen main page. I think a great area for improvement is to hide these functions so as not to confuse employees.
We are moving away from the standalone eCourse model, so depending upon when that shift happens, we might choose not to renew since we won't be supporting eCourses built in Articulate Storyline anymore. As long as we are still selling and supporting those eCourses, we will continue to renew the licenses we have.
Implementing a new system and process company wide is never an easy task. We moved so quickly in such a short period of time that we were able to learn quickly but also have the opportunity to improve the Halogen experience. We will more than likely will renew our use of Halogen as we already are seeing a small impact which hopefully in the long run will lead to a greater impact
The basics are easy to learn but you won't get really robust activities from using just the basics. However, if you can invest the time in learning how to use all of Storyline's features, you'll have tremendous learning development power at your fingertips. I do have to say, though, that there is a beautiful logic to how everything in Storyline works. Once you learn a few of the advanced features, you can learn them all because there's a similar underlying logic. The interface is also very appealing and friendly.
Halogen is very intuitive and provides very clean work-space ... lots of white space and modern layouts. There is more than one way to accomplish your action, too!
They are support-superstars and the software they use for support is excellent too (I don't know what it is). The model they use for support should be followed by all companies. It is a conversation/discussion forum model that shows everyone's questions in a knowledge base capacity so you can get the help you need in a speedy way.
We only purchased the appraisal module and without the other modules offered, you are really limited in what you can do and the process becomes much more involved with needing to maintain information across multiple platforms. We found that they charge for everything and call it "consulting." We poured so much money and time into a system that was just overkill for what we really needed.
I love the fact that both a demonstration AND text version of the tutorials are available. Our firewall was blocking the demos until I requested my company allow them! Having the text version available still enabled me to learn from the tutorials. They are very well done and informative, and there is a tutorial for just about anything you need to learn to do with Storyline. I have always been more than satisfied with the support and training available to us for all Articulate products and I love the community!
Outside of having to dedicate a powerful enough PC for the installation and having to update Flash in our browsers there really isn't much pain involved in using Articulate. For the most part this is an easy to implement and roll-out product. The installation occurs quickly and smoothly with no additional steps needed.
Articulate Storyline is the only authoring tool we have used with our LMS to date. We are seeing different platforms now, as opposed to LMS platforms. And, many of those have their own content. However, we will always need to create/author our own because of the nature of what we do and how we do it. I'm a big fan!
I have used other systems in the past and I like that Halogen provides everything in one space. I would like to see a more developed way to report training, not in the LMS, but I think that for the most part that Halogen is a robust system that is superior to its competition.
It is easy to train new users and manage content. Being able to import older projects and PPT files makes it very easy to use for a lot of "moonlighters" in our department.
Allows for on-demand training that is accessible to anyone in the organization instantaneously.
Heavily reduces travel expenses by eliminating the need for in-person training classes.
Gives my department creative liberties in designing content that can be customized to each and every subject/business group in the organization. No two courses are ever the same.
We are able to get our reviews done in a quicker amount of time. Instead of 4-8 weeks we were able to get it done under a month.
Halogen has gotten better at given us a heads up when the system will be down. Most patches are done overnight so we can at least verify it was done, but their success rate of a patch not breaking something is not at 99%. So we do lose productivity when the system is down.
The tool is easier to do so there are fewer questions from users outside the core team.
