SumTotal Systems unveils new ToolBook update
SumTotal Systems today announced the availability of ToolBook Service Pack 2, the newest version of its award winning simulation and content authoring solution. Responding to customer demand and evolving industry trends, SumTotal has added significant new capabilities to the product, including Java-free deployment, support for SCORM 2004 content, browser support for Firefox and Mozilla, tighter integration with the SumTotal platform and enhanced online tutorials.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (June 6, 2004) - SumTotal Systems (NASDAQ: SUMTE), the largest provider of learning and business performance technologies and services, today announced the availability of ToolBook Service Pack 2, the newest version of its award winning simulation and content authoring solution. Responding to customer demand and evolving industry trends, SumTotal has added significant new capabilities to the product, including Java-free deployment, support for SCORM 2004 content, browser support for Firefox and Mozilla, tighter integration with the SumTotal platform and enhanced online tutorials.
ToolBook helps organizations create compelling content and simulations that are a critical success factor in any organizational learning initiative. Using ToolBook, companies can create professional, standards-based simulations, tutorials, assessments, courseware and other interactive learning content without in-depth programming skills. Based on AICC and SCORM standards, ToolBook also makes it easy to launch and track ToolBook content through a standards-compliant learning management system (LMS).
ToolBook Service Pack 2 represents the most powerful version of the solution ever brought to market, delivering an easier, more flexible user experience to learners and content authors alike. With enhanced usability features and greater automation of redundant tasks, ToolBook Service Pack 2 significantly increases content development speed and productivity, enabling authors to get critical training and just-in-time information to learners more quickly. New, advanced capabilities in Service Pack 2 include:
Java-free Deployment
Responding to growing customer demand, this ToolBook release enables users to launch and interact with ToolBook's rich Web content without the need for Java in their Web browsers. This decreases restrictions on content development and delivery, making it much easier for a broader user audience to access and use courses and learning activities.
SCORM 2004 Support
ToolBook Service Pack 2 adds support for SCORM 2004, the latest version of the "Shareable Content Object Reference Model" learning standard. This support strengthens the integration of ToolBook content with SumTotal's TotalLMS or other SCORM 2004-compliant learning management systems. It also ensures the smooth deployment of learning content through an LMS, reducing cycle time for content authors and the total cost of learning initiatives overall. In addition to SCORM 2004, ToolBook continues its support for the SCORM 1.2 and AICC standards.
Expanded Browser Support
Providing increased flexibility and options for the ToolBook user community, ToolBook Service Pack 2 incorporates new support for Mozilla and Firefox browsers in addition to its ongoing support for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape. Now larger audiences of users can run ToolBook content through a broader variety of Web browsers without having to install new applications or worry about incompatibility of the content with their systems.
Enhanced Online Tutorials and Developers Exchange
ToolBook Service Pack 2 improves the content development experience by incorporating new tutorials designed to help reduce the learning curve for new ToolBook users and to help long-time users familiarize themselves with some of the newer or more complex ToolBook capabilities, such as creating simulations. Content authors can also locate and help develop new tools in the Developer's Exchange, one of ToolBook's extensibility features.
MedStar Health, which uses ToolBook to develop learning content and critical regulatory compliance training for more than 22,000 employees, was one of more than 500 SumTotal customers that beta-tested ToolBook Service Pack 2. "ToolBook is the easiest solution we have found for content development, particularly because it doesn't require us to know complicated back-end coding or to bring in an IT expert," said Amy E. Uranachek, e-learning specialist/ coordinator at MedStar Health. "The Java-free deployment in ToolBook Service Pack 2 is incredibly important to us, as we have such a diverse population of computer systems throughout our hospitals and other businesses. Our users will now have trouble-free access to training and we'll save the significant time and legwork that used to go into modifying content or individual desktops to be able to run our learning activities."
Dave Carter, senior training and development representative at Eastman Chemical Company, agrees. "We're creating a wide variety of training, development and compliance content for more than 10,000 employees worldwide, many of whom may have different Java versions on their computers," said Carter. "We are looking forward to not having to worry about whether content will run easily and consistently on everyone's machines. We can now create and deliver our content once and move on to other critical projects."
For Cornell University, which uses ToolBook to create accounting process training for faculty and accounting certification for the school's finance staff, it is essential that ToolBook content be compatible with the Firefox and Mozilla browsers. "The two new browsers and Java-free capability are the two biggest pieces for us in ToolBook Service Pack 2, because they make it much easier to deliver content to our users," said Steve Jackson, manager of customer training and development in the Financial Affairs Division at Cornell. "Our department doesn't have control over how computer systems roll out in each department. What matters to me is whether content will load onto a user's machine and run with little or no tweaking. As training professionals, we always keep our eyes open for new solutions on the market. But we always keep coming back to ToolBook, because it enables us to easily develop content that works the way we need it to."
"Our primary focus in developing ToolBook Service Pack 2 was to address the end-user experience. We spend considerable time talking to the active, dynamic ToolBook user audience, which includes more than 13,000 organizations around the world," said R. Andrew Eckert, SumTotal CEO. "We have a deep understanding not only of their organizations' overall business objectives, but of what it's like to have the day-to-day, in-the-trenches job of supporting learning initiatives for global, multi-divisional, multi-geographical companies with thousands of employees. We know that's no small task. So we continue to develop ToolBook and our other products to make it easier for training and development professionals to do their jobs and, as a result, empower them to make a greater contribution toward achieving the bottom line goals of their organizations. "
For more information on ToolBook Service Pack 2, or to download a 30-day trial version of the product, visit the SumTotal Systems Web site at www.sumtotalsystems.com.