With New Learning Management Software, Pathlore Demonstrates Continued Technology Leadership

The new release features several Pathlore innovations including the XLMS™ (eXtensible Learning Management Service) real-time, enterprise application integration technology. XLMS enables Pathlore customers to embed access to both learning and administrative tasks in any business process or workflow. The new release demonstrates both technology leadership and Pathlore’s commitment to responding to customer input in areas such as e-learning standards, content integration, reporting, and advanced Microsoft technology integration.

XLMSâ„¢ Web Services Technology
Software developers can use XLMS, an application programming interface (API) built as WS-I compliant Web Services, to design interactions between the LMS and other enterprise systems to accomplish a wide variety of tasks. WS-I (www.ws-i.org) is an industry consortium dedicated to ensuring interoperability of web services between various platforms and vendors. Developers will find no limit to the ways in which they can use XLMS to leverage the power of the Pathlore Learning management system with existing investments in portals, messaging infrastructure, HRMS databases and mission-critical enterprise applications. For example, customers can use XLMS web services integration to ensure that an employee has achieved a certain competency level before accessing certain functions in mission-critical ERP systems, thereby adding a real-time validation of employee skills to their web-services-aware ERP system.

Earlier this year, The Workflow Institute’s Sam Adkins wrote, “Web services are the dominant Enterprise Application Integration method in the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).” SOA is a software architecture that aims to create a coupling among software systems. Adkins also stated that Pathlore, like the small but growing handful of best-of-breed vendors that have embraced SOA, now recognizes that web services “are vital as organizations increasingly embed learning access in other application environments.”

E-Learning Standards Leadership
Pathlore has a long history of e-learning industry standards leadership. Pathlore’s system was the first to be SCORM 1.2 and AICC certified. With the release of LMS 6.5, Pathlore takes the lead on standards again by introducing Content Developers Assistant (CDA), which ensures standards-compliant content interoperates with the LMS. Customers can use CDA to diagnose and debug custom or off-the-shelf content in real time, greatly enhancing developer productivity and decreasing costs.

Along with CDA, the new release adds support for the Package Exchange Notification System (PENS), an e-learning standard that allows content publishing interoperability between authoring tools, content management systems and learning management systems. PENS is the result of a joint industry initiative led by Pathlore, Documentum, Macromedia and others with support from the Aviation Industry CBT (Computer-Based Training) Committee (AICC), an e-learning standards body and international association of training professionals. Pathlore’s recently announced alliance with EMC Corporation makes use of the newly created PENS specification – implemented using XLMS – to integrate EMC Documentum’s Enterprise Content Management platform with Pathlore’s learning management suite.

“PENS allows our customers to publish any type of content they find in EMC Documentum’s Enterprise Content Management platform and turn it into material for, say, a training course delivered by our LMS,” said Leonard Greenberg, Pathlore’s chief technology officer. “The combination of XLMS, web services and PENS gives customers a powerful way to exchange data between their LMS and other enterprise applications.”

Pathlore has also added support in LMS 6.5 for SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) 2004, the latest specification of the widely accepted industry model for creating and deploying e-learning.

Advanced Microsoft Reporting, Exchange, and .NET Integration
Other noteworthy capabilities in Pathlore LMS 6.5 include:

· Microsoft Reporting Service, which offers Pathlore users a new, flexible and low-cost option for creating and publishing reports.
· Microsoft Exchange integration, which synchronizes scheduling changes and swaps updates between LMS 6.5 and Microsoft Exchange.
· Continuing support of Microsoft’s .NET technology framework, including XLMS, which is built on .NET-based web services.

The company has also incorporated more than 60 product suggestions from customers that range from features for personalizing the way the LMS displays data to pop-up windows that offer users tips and tactics for managing data. Other significant customer-driven enhancements are in the areas of manager workflow and advanced resource management.

“Our goal with training is not only to deliver education faster, better and less expensively but also to make sure that people learn the skills that will boost our organization’s performance,” said Derek Rice, training consultant at The Cincinnati Insurance Companies. “We expect Pathlore’s new release to meet our needs, keeping us on track with our training and development goals.”