What is SystemHomepageUrl?
Engine gained xAPI support in 2012, and consequently birthed the SystemHomepageUrl setting. This setting is primarily used as the homePage in Account Objects for xAPI Actors created by Engine. In other words, it's part of the learner identifier. Engine also uses SystemHomepageUrl when prefixing Activity IDs for xAPI Activities during SCORM-to-xAPI conversion (if enabled).
What should I use as a value for SystemHomepageUrl?
Because the principal conceptual basis for SystemHomepageUrl is for describing accounts on a system, we typically recommend that you use the URL of the application running Engine. For instance, for Cloud, our SystemHomepageUrl is http://cloud.scorm.com/, so any Actors created when xAPI content is launched in Cloud have an IRL in their homePage that starts with that URL.
Key points to consider when setting it:
- It should be canonical and considered permanent, which is why we recommend using the actual URL of the application if possible. Since it's used as part of learners' identifiers, changing it will break existing xAPI registrations.
- Set it uniquely per instance of Engine where a repeated username wouldn't necessarily imply the same actual learner, or if it's important to keep activity data separate per instance of Engine. Put another way, if it is possible that "Bob" in one system will not be the same logical user as "Bob" in the other system, different URLs need to be used.
If you for some reason need to configure SystemHomepageUrl dynamically, you can do so at either the system or tenant level via the Engine API, see: Configuring Engine with the API