Frequently Asked Questions on PowerPoint Elearning Content Authoring in authorPOINT

There are two ways you can install authorPOINT-

• Either go to http://www.authorgen.com/authorpoint/trialversion.htm and download the trial version of authorPOINT. There are two installer set ups available for you to download- Complete Installer Setup and Smart Installer Setup. Try out the trial version, and get it upgraded by purchasing the activation key from us
• OR you can directly purchase authorPOINT by mailing us at sales@authorgen.com

The trial version will last for 30 days. During the trial period, all the features will be available to you, but with one limitation- Flash presentations will be built only for the duration of 5 minutes while the Windows media output will build full length presentation, with no watermarks in the output. If you fail to upgrade authorPOINT after the 30 days of trial period, Flash build options will be disabled; even though the Windows Media Output would be available and will produce full length presentations.

We will provide an activation key when authorPOINT is purchased. The system prompts for the key when you open Content Manager for the first time after installation. Enter your 25 digit activation key. You can activate authorPOINT anytime within the 30-day trial period and even after the trial period is over, through 'Upgrade to authorPOINT plus' menu option in Updates menu. Contact sales@authorgen.com for further details.

authorPOINT is a plug-in toolbar in MS PowerPoint. Open Microsoft PowerPoint®. authorPOINT toolbar and the authorPOINT menu will be shown in the PowerPoint window. If these do not appear, right click in the toolbar region and check for authorGEN. The authorPOINT toolbar and menu should now be visible. View Getting started with authorPOINT for details.

The security block messages come up only in Windows XP or on computers that have the Windows firewall installed. It is an alert mechanism against non-Microsoft add-ins and executables. authorPOINT causes no harm to the Windows installation. Unblock it when this message appears

The Presentation Name is used as your project folder's name throughout authorPOINT and is used in the file directory. The Presentation Title appears in the top panel of the output players.

The authorPOINT projects are saved by default at My Documents\authorGEN Projects\ for each user login. To store these elsewhere, simply specify the desired location in the Path field in Launch authorPOINT window or click on the Browse button and navigate to that location.

Content Manager's "Move To..' option allows you to change the location of the authorPOINT projects. Go to Tools menu and select 'Move To.' option. The 'Move To.' window displays a list of authorPOINT projects saved on your computer. Select the project(s) to be moved and click on the button marked 'Move To'. Select the location where the selected projects are to be moved and click on 'Ok'.

The Launch authorPOINT window displays a VU meter in its Media Details section. It shows the level of your microphone's receptivity, if the application picks your microphone. Check if your microphone is plugged in properly, if the VU meter does not show any signal.

If you are a Windows XP user, you can test your microphone by clicking on 'Start Test' button. The test will record the audio for 10 seconds and replay the recorded audio for you to ascertain whether your microphone is working fine. If you are using Windows 2000, you can view only the VU meter; the test that we mentioned above will not be available to you. It is available to Windows XP users only.

Content Manager lets you make changes in your presentation details when you have already captured it. To make captions appear in the output, go to Edit Presentation details window that opens through Build menu in Content Manager. Check the "Show speaker notes in output" option.

Entering keywords enables the searching of all presentations in the Content Manager to find specific presentations based on these words.

Go to the Media tab in Advance Settings window. In the Audio/ Video Source field select the Pre-recorded File option. A new window will open. Browse to select the pre-recorded file. Select the file by clicking on Open. If audio only is desired, de-select the video box.
authorPOINT supports the following file types for pre-recorded media:

*.wmv windows media video
*.avi audio video interleave
*.wma windows media audio
*.wav an audio file format

Yes, you can use authorPOINT Content Manager's Edit Presentation Details option to edit the details of a captured presentation. Select the presentation you want to edit from Content Manager. Go to the Edit Presentation Details window through Build menu. This window allows you to enter or edit the different details of your presentation anytime you build your presentation. The window opens up with different user tabs that let you enter or edit presentation specific details. The entry or changes that you make here will reflect in the final output once you rebuild your presentation.

This is an inherent problem of MS PowerPoint 2003 that occurs if you continuously loop a PowerPoint 2003 presentation in MS PowerPoint. You can check the following link for details: http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;843244&spid=2522&sid=50

While capturing the presentation, you can either annotate on the slides (as explained in the previous question); OR use the Pointer Tool. To use the pointer tool, click on Clicking the icon, positions the pointer tool on the screen. Press and hold down the left mouse button, and drag the pointer to move it on the screen.

This condition can be caused by the following:

• Presentation Files/Folder is set to read only.
• Presentation Files/Folder is in use.
• Presentation Files/Folder was created by some other application/user.

Preview Control may hang due to insufficient process memory being available. The recording process does continue unaffected however.

Yes for the current slide; no for previous slides. Presentation recording can be paused by clicking on the (pause) button. To re-record from the beginning of the current slide just click the (re-record) button.

Yes. To annotate follow these steps:

• Click on pen tool to add annotation.
• The mouse pointer changes to '.' (a point). Then write with your mouse device.
• When the pointer is in '.' state, is displayed instead of pen tool image. . The mouse tool is active in the pen state.
• To revert back to original pointer, click on to run the pen tool off.
• Till the pen tool is active in a slide, the slide show of your presentation will not resume. You can, however, move to next or previous build (while annotating) using the respective buttons.

Discard these or they will be embedded into the PowerPoint file. When Content Manager's build processes the PowerPoint file, this annotation will be extracted as an image, which appears in the output.

Other installed add-ins can consume certain events which authorPOINT requires. While such software is installed, authorPOINT will not capture presentations. Contact support@authorgen.com for further details.

The Content Manager enables viewing the selected presentation. When capturing is completed, open the Content Manager and highlight the presentation. Click on Build in the tool bar. Select the media output desired and the project will be built. Then select View Presentation from the Presentation menu or click on the View Presentations icon on the tool bar.

The Content Manager is a 'built-in' software designed to manage the presentations. The Content Manager stores information about each presentation as well as includes the functionality to distribute the presentations. See Detailed features

You can build your presentation in the following formats:

Following are the pre-requisite conditions for viewing the presentation built in different formats.

• The Presentation is built through the Build menu.

For Windows Media:

• Popup blockers, if any, should be disabled.
• The Internet Explorer must be of version 5.5 or above.
• Windows Media Player must be version 8.0 or above.
• Confirm that the Windows Media files need to be associated with IE; how to check or change this:
  • Right click on the file.
  • Click on Properties.
  • The Properties dialog box opens up displaying the details of the file.
  • The icon is displayed in the dialog box.
  • The "Opens With" field displays that the file can be opened through Internet Explorer.

• Flash Player version 8.0 or above should be installed.

Windows Media Presentations can be played with Internet Explorer 5.5 or above. Flash Presentations can be played with Internet Explorer, Netscape or Mozilla firefox (provided they have Flash 8 plug in installed).

Windows Media do not support annotations.

Yes, authorPOINT recognizes projects captured using previous versions of authorGEN for PowerPoint and authorGEN Studio. Using Content Manager's "Recover Projects" feature just choose "Recover" from the menu and Content Manager brings these back in.

"Recover Projects" connects previously produced presentations with the new Content Manager edition. This is also used when:

• Moving presentations created on one computer to another.
• To back up your projects/presentations for re-formating and rebuilding your computer.
• To recover projects captured through earlier versions of authorGEN products (authorGEN 2.0 or earlier) and authorGEN Studio.

Build options are disabled if Content Manager is not able to recognize the media type for that presentation. This can happen in the case of a Recovered Project. Make sure the the media file is in the project folder when recovering a project and that it is a type supported by authorPOINT - *.wmv, *.avi, *.wma, or *.wav.

Make sure that your project(s) meets the following conditions and contains following pre- requisite files for Content Manager to list it:

• Project agn file.
• PowerPoint® file.
• Any of the four possible presentations. A Project's presentation makes it visible in Content Manager

The Search tool in Content Manager searches the Presentation Name, the Presentation Title, the PowerPoint file name, the Slides title, the Speakers notes, the Keywords and the Description.

The CD/DVD Writer option requires Administrative rights.

Content Manager provides three ways to upload presentation folders to the web.

• FTP Server: Presentations can be uploaded through Content Manager to any preferred FTP server.
• authorSTREAM: authorGEN provides a service where presentations can uploaded to authorSTREAM - authorGEN's streaming server - and provided to the intended audience(s) in Windows Media or Flash formats.
• Online education- WiZiQ-a perfect platform for sharing educational content with the students. Use WiZiQ's virtual classroom equipped with live audio-video communication, chat, content sharing, and session recording capabilities.

authorSTREAM is authorGEN's streaming server service that has capabilities to stream Windows Media and Flash Presentations. For additional information, click Link for authorSTREAM's web page.

Yes. Using Content Manager's Distribute function, presentations can be saved to flash drives, removable hard drives, and network drives.

authorPOINT can be updated only by the users who are logged in with administrative privileges. After the installation, updated version is available for all the users to use. Go to Updates menu and select 'Check for authorPOINT updates'. After scanning your computer for critical authorPOINT updates, the Content Manager displays a suggested list of updates so that you may install these. You can install them right away or choose to install them later. When you install them, the application requires you to close some applications including Content Manager. On the completion of installation, the success message pops up conveying that updates were installed successfully.

authorPOINT collects information about the presentations captured through authorPOINT by a user on his computer and sends it back to our development team so that we can use that information solely for the purpose to improve our product's usability and enrich the user's experience with authorPOINT. It keeps your information anonymous. You can agree or disagree to allow authorPOINT to collect this information. This preference can also be set from 'Our customer experience program' menu option of the Help menu.