Control Access to your Distributed Content
This is part of the tutorial series: Control Access to your Distributed Content:
Intro
In this tutorial we highlight a way that you can package and distribute your course content while maintaining control over access and availability of those packages. In just a few calls to the SCORM Cloud API, we can achieve just that by utilizing SCORM Cloud Dispatch.
While this tutorial is aimed at the API beginner, if you haven’t read the Getting Started guide, you should do so before we get started. This will guide you through getting set up with a free SCORM Cloud Trial account, and obtaining the API credentials that you’ll need to use our API.
Additionally, it is up to you how to execute the calls mentioned in this guide. We will link to our interactive API reference throughout the guide, and that’s actually all you need. You can make real API calls directly from the API reference to your Application in SCORM Cloud. I’d suggest keeping it open in another tab or window for convenience, or you’ll have to put in your credentials with every call. Alternatively, if you want to code along you can grab one of our available client libraries. The information in API reference should be helpful to you in implementing this solution in any language.
Terminology
Before we get started, we should go over a few terms we’ll be using throughout the guide. Don’t worry, we aren’t going super deep into lecture time. We just want to make sure we’re speaking the same language.
Application:
You may remember for the Getting Started guide that an Application is a section of SCORM Cloud which is protected by a credential set which we will use to authenticate with the API. Your applicationId and secretKey are equivalent to your username/password for the API. If you’re using our interactive API reference, click the Authorize button at the top of the screen and put these details in.
Course/Package:
You’ll hear course and package thrown around more or less interchangeably. For now just know these are referring to the content you want to distribute.
Dispatch
A dispatch is a zip package which an LMS will view as a regular course. For our purposes, you can think of a dispatch as the middle man between your content and who you give that content to. This middle man reports only to you, and can provide access control for your content even after it leaves your hands.
Destination
A destination is a section of your Application that stores a group of dispatches. In short, a course is dispatched into a destination.
Next up: Upload your Content