Interview Skills Trainer
Release Notes
Release 7
Interview Skills Trainer – Release Notes
Introduction
This document contains the Release Notes for Release 7 of the Interview Skills
Trainer (IST) system.
This document covers the following topics:

Installation.

New Functionality.

Functionality Not Yet Implemented.

Known Bugs and Issues.
Installation
The system is supplied as two distinct installer packages, one for the IST Server
(“ist_server_setup.exe”) and one for the IST Client application
(“ist_client_setup.exe”). IST Server is designed to run on a central network
server (which can be a virtual server if desired). IST Client is designed to run on
a network work station. However, note that the two applications can also be
installed on the same machine if preferred.
IST Server
To install IST Server, follow these steps:
1. Run the installer package ist_server_setup.exe and follow the prompts.
2. We recommend that you select the default folder for the installation. If
you do decide to change the installation folder, you SHOULD NOT
install the Server into the Program Files folder.
3. At the end of the installation, you will be asked whether you wish to
launch the Server immediately. If you prefer to launch the server later,
you can do so from the shortcut added to the desktop (“IST Server”).
4. By default, the Server will use port 2020 to communicate with IST
Clients. If required, you can change this via the “Server \ Config” main
menu option. Note that if you do this, you must also change every IST
Client to use the same port (see below).
5. When you launch the Server, you must then select the “Start” option
from the main menu to start the Server running.
IST Client
To install IST Client, follow these steps:
1. Run the installer package ist_client_setup.exe and follow the prompts.
2. We recommend that you select the default folder for the installation. If
you do decide to change the installation folder, you SHOULD NOT
install the Client in the Program Files folder.
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Interview Skills Trainer – Release Notes
3. At the end of the install, you will be asked whether to launch the IST
Client. You can either check this box to launch the IST Client when the
installer closes, or you can launch the Client later via the shortcut on
your desktop (you’ll find the shortcut in a folder on your desktop called
“Interview Skills Trainer”)..
4. When you launch the IST Client for the first time, two additional steps
of installation will occur. Firstly, the Microsoft DirectX Setup
application will appear, as follows:
You must run through this setup to ensure that DirectX is properly
configured to be able to run the IST 3D environments. If you wish to run
the DirectX Setup at any later time, you can do so from the “DirectX
Setup” shortcut in the “Interview Skills Trainer” folder on your desktop.
5. After the DirectX setup completes, the IST Client Config application will
appear, as follows:
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Interview Skills Trainer – Release Notes
This allows you to specify the IP address and port on which the IST
Server can be contacted. If you are running the Server and Client on the
same machine, enter “127.0.0.1” for the IP address (as shown in the
above illustration). Otherwise, you would enter the address of the
machine on which the Server has been installed (your network
administrator will know this address).
Note that if you change the port from the default value of “‘2020”, you
will also need to change the port in the IST Server application to match
(see above).
If you wish to run the IST Client Config application at any later time,
you can do so from the “DirectX Setup” shortcut in the “Interview Skills
Trainer” folder on your desktop.
6. Finally, you can launch the IST Client from the “Interview Skills
Trainer” shortcut located within the “Interview Skills Trainer” folder on
your desktop.
New Functionality
The following new features / enhancements have been added for Release 6:

When a question’s text appears in the menu for the student to make a
selection, this text will now honor any carriage returns that have been
entered. For example, if you entered the following text in the Question
Dialog (with carriage returns as shown):
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Interview Skills Trainer – Release Notes
then the menu presented to the student when the scenario runs will show
the text on the menu wrapped across three lines, exactly as it appears in
the Question Dialog.
If you don’t enter any carriage returns, but place the text all in one line,
then the text when finally displayed in the scenario menu will
automatically break at appropriate words so that it will fit within the
width of the menu. Note that the width of the edit box in the Question
Dialog will be the same as the total width of the menu when the
scenario runs.

A bug has been fixed that caused the lip synching on some sounds to
‘freeze’ (although the sound itself continued to play correctly). Note
that this bug only occurred on those machines with their speech engine
set to “U.K”, rather than “U.S”. This has been corrected so that the lip
synch will work correctly regardless of the speech engine setting (the
code has been changed to automatically find the correct speech engine).
However, please note that any sounds that have exhibited this
particular error will need to be reprocessed to generate a new lip
synch timing file (note that you do not need to re-record the sound file,
only re-process it). To reprocess the sound file, follow these steps:
1. Use the “Teacher / Manage Scenarios” menu option to open the Edit
Scenarios Dialog for the scenario in question.
2. Right click on the Response that contains the sound file to be
reprocessed and select the “Edit” menu option to bring up the
Character Response Dialog.
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Interview Skills Trainer – Release Notes
3. Click the Browse button and navigate to the corresponding “wav”
file on your file system. Click OK. You should then see a Message
Box notifying you that the sound file processing is about to begin.
4. Click OK on the Message Box to re-process the sound.
5. You’ll then see the following Message Box once the processing has
completed successfully:
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Interview Skills Trainer – Release Notes
6. Click OK on this Message Box and then make sure that you click
OK on the Edit Scenario Dialog to upload the modified scenario to
the IST Server.
Functionality Not Yet Implemented
The following functions have not yet been implemented:

Operation of the IST Client on a stand-alone student machine.
Known Bugs and Issues
Known bugs and issues are listed below:

If the student asks the character the next question before the previous
response has finished (i.e. before the character finished speaking), the
new response will begin playing over the top of the previous response.
The work around is to wait until the character finishes speaking before
asking the next question..
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