Core Strengths Presenter (CSP)

Functional and Technical Overview

The CSP (Core Strengths Presenter) is a fully-contained, stand-alone application that is designed to run on either a macOS or Windows platform. The CSP is a tool used by individuals (aka Facilitators) that have been Certified in support their delivery of Core Strengths within their organization. The CSP affords a Facilitator with a slide set that follows a rigorous lesson plan. That guarantees uniformity and consistency with the delivery of a Core Strengths Class. In addition to the lesson content (slides), the CSP also contains a number of videos that are beneficial to the delivery and understanding of Core Strengths content. But its most powerful use comes with its ability to sync with the Platform (our Core Strengths Web Portal) and download the assessment results of the Class for use within the session being delivered. Learners (members of the organization that are taking part in the Class) take the Core Strengths assessment in advance of the Class. The assessment results are downloaded to the Facilitator's CSP in advance of delivering the Class so that these results are available to the Facilitator when delivering Class content. These results are computed realtime by the CSP so that the Facilitator can show and discuss any combination of the data, from a single individual's results to full composite results for the entire Class. It's a powerful tool and fundamental for the Facilitator to effectively deliver Core Strengths content.

The CSP has been designed to support both in-person and virtual delivery of its content so it can run when tethered to the network in support of a virtual delivery of the Class or in an untethered mode in support of an in-person delivery of the Class. Whether tethered or untethered, the CSP is fully self-contained - including the videos - so that all content delivered is done to by the computer it's installed on. The is no occurrence for a need to stream content at any time.

From a technical perspective, the Facilitator - once fully Certified - is provided with their own account on the Platform. Upon logging in, they would navigate to the Resources Page where they would be able to download the CSP for their use in these Class environments / sessions. The CSP is currently offered in 9 different languages - soon to become 12 - and the Facilitator can download as many of the language variants they wish. Their download request causes the polling of their operating environment to determine whether they are using Windows, macOS, or some other operating environment such as iOS. As only Windows and macOS operating environments, download requests would only occur for these environments and requests from other operating environments would not be fulfilled.

Now that the Facilitator has completed the download(s) of the CSP, it must be installed on their computer. For Windows users, the download package is an msi file (Microsoft Installation file). This msi file has been specifically designed to be able to be installed by a user without any elevated privileges. And the CSP is not installed to the Windows Program Files directory but to the user's Documents directory. This is done to not only avoid the need for elevated privileges, but also to address the fact that each CSP installed will be configured with a Facilitator's unique Presenter Key. Should the computer be shared by several Facilitators, each Facilitator will be required to install their own instance of the CSP so that they can configure it uniquely for their Classes and related Class content (i.e. assessment results).

For the macOS user, their download package will consist of a dmg file (digital image file) which is the most common way to deliver software to a Mac environment. Installation of the CSP would consist of the Facilitator's opening the dmg file, and doing a drag-and-drop of the CSP icon onto the Applications Folder icon. That causes the CSP to be uncompressed and written to the Facilitator's Applications Folder.

Whether Windows or macOS, the use of the CSP is identical. When the Facilitator launches the CSP for the first time, they will need to configure their instance. The first screen encountered expects the Facilitator to provide their Presenter Key. This is a 32-digit authentication token that the Facilitator would retrieve from their Platform account. This token uniquely identifies the Facilitator and the Classes that are owned by the Facilitator. In this fashion, a Facilitator can only ever cause the content they own to be downloaded to their computer. Once they've provided their Presenter Key, the CSP uses the network to establish a connection with the Platform. The Presenter Key is used to identify which Class data to be downloaded. The xml format is used for the delivery of this information to the CSP. Also, the underlying protocol used for this connection is https for secure (TLS 1.2) and encrypted transfer of the assessment data.

It is important to note that the way the CSP is installed on a Facilitator's computer must offer the ability to write to the disk. This is because the configuration information, including the Presenter Key along with the assessment results of the Class, must be written to disk so that it would be available to the CSP when a Facilitator launches it for use with a Class. This is also how the CSP can work in an untethered fashion as all of the necessary data is contained within the CSP so network access is not necessary during Class delivery.