What is SystemHomepageUrl?
SystemHomepageUrl is a new Engine setting added in Engine 2012 to correspond with the introduction of initial support for xAPI in the Engine platform that is primarily used as the homePage in Account Objects for Actors created by Engine. So, basically, it's a learner identifier. Engine also uses SystemHomepageUrl for prefixing Activity IDs for xAPI Activities provided by Engine when SCORM -> xAPI conversion is 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.
- 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 need to configure SystemHomepageUrl dynamically, you can override GetSystemHompageUrl in your integration layer.