I am teaching a class using the tutorials on Make Code Arcade.
Student log into their Microsoft office school-based accounts for cloud saving.
They use the site Microsoft MakeCode Arcade
As of this week their progress for their tutorials is not being saved to the cloud. The system is reset as soon as they leave the tutorial.
They can make a backup their work to My Projects, but this will not help them go through the tutorials as it merely saves their completed work as a unique project.
MS has a had problems before, with conflicting cloud projects, but this is not saving the tutorial projects for any project. Please help as my students need to be able to save their progress and back-track to various tutorial steps when they make mistakes.
Hi @emory55, I’m sorry this issue is affecting your students! I’d like to gather some more details to help troubleshoot:
Are your students experiencing this in an Arcade skillmap or a regular Arcade tutorial? Knowing this will help narrow down where to start troubleshooting.
What is the name of the skillmap or tutorial they were using?
Was cloud sync working for them at some point in the past?
Is this affecting all students, a subset of them, or just one student?
Can you reproduce the issue with your own account?
Additionally, please double-check that your students are signed into their Arcade accounts, not just their browser profiles. Sometimes, students may be signed into their browser but not into the Arcade platform itself.
If you can reproduce the issue on a student’s machine, could you open the browser’s developer tools and check the console for errors? Additionally, please look at the Network tab for any failed requests. Let me know if you need assistance with this.
Hi Eric,
They are happening in Arcade skillmaps:
In particular all of the Next Level Skill Maps, like Jungle Jump Platformer or Shark Attack.
Cloud syncing was working last week. I have had students with projects that were saying conflict error which was solved by not having multiple tabs open. This error is not that, however. They finish the tutorial stage and if they go home, when they return the tutorial is back to square one, with nothing saved.
I am currently trying to reproduce the problem using my school account (still testing. Unfortunately, it might be apples to oranges, as teachers have more security rights and our laptops are different machines which are not shared workstations). I was wondering if local cache files could affect it, or specific browsers, but we are using Edge and i did clear the cache and it still did not fix the problem. It does happen to many of my students’ accounts.
Additionally, please double-check that your students are signed into their Arcade accounts, not just their browser profiles. Sometimes, students may be signed into their browser but not into the Arcade platform itself.
Can you elaborate on this? I always have my students click the sign-in and their Icon shows up in the top right-hand corner of Make Code Arcade.
If you can reproduce the issue on a student’s machine, could you open the browser’s developer tools and check the console for errors? Additionally, please look at the Network tab for any failed requests. Let me know if you need assistance with this.
I will try to log into a student machine with my account and see if the same thing happens to me. I am not familiar with the browser tools related to Make Code Arcade. I would like to know more about the Network tab as well to see if there are failed requests.
I take it nothing changed on MS’ end this past week in terms of cloud services or Make Code?
On my school (teacher) MS account and on my laptop, I can concur the tutorials reset like my student accounts. I tested it on 80’s rockstar maze. Make Code Skill Map
The progress does not save after completing a tutorial section.
Let’s ensure that the necessary MakeCode domains are accessible. On a student’s computer, please open the following page, which will test reachability to the domains we use:
Regarding MakeCode updates: There haven’t been any recent changes that would affect cloud sync. I tested this locally and was able successfully restore progress in a cloud-synced skillmap. Here’s what I did:
Opened the link you provided, this started a new “Rockstar” skillmap, but I wasn’t signed in yet.
Signed into Arcade, selecting “remember me” to stay signed in after closing and opening the browser.
Completed two of the tutorials within the skillmap.
Waited for cloud sync to finish. Here’s what that looks like:
Closed the browser, then reopened it by clicking your link again.
My progress was preserved.
Do your students ever see the “Saved to cloud” status at any point?
Regarding Sign-In Clarification: It sounds like your students are signing into Arcade and not just the browser. Thanks for clarifying that.
Browser Devtools: Access to browser devtools might be restricted in some schools, so they may not be available. If they aren’t blocked, you can open them on any web page by pressing F12. The devtools interface can look overwhelming at first, but the useful information will be found in the Console and Network tabs. You will likely need to reload the Arcade page after opening devtools for data in these tabs to populate.
Once you have devtools open, try reproducing the issue again. This will allow it to capture debugging information generated during the activity.
Next, check for errors in the Console tab and failed requests in the Network tab. Keep in mind that some errors and failures are normal, we’re looking for anything unusual or unexpected.
Console Errors
We want to find any errors in the Console that look like a call stack, which points to where a critical error occurred in the code. A call stack typically looks like this:
Uncaught Error: Something went wrong
at functionA (main.js:25)
at functionB (main.js:50)
Network Failures
In the Network tab, look for any failed requests to the path /api/user/project. Failed requests are those with a status code of 400 or higher, and they will usually be highlighted in red.
No Pressure
If this seems too complex, don’t worry! We can troubleshoot using other methods. This is just what I would check if I were on site.
This actually opens a new tab in Edge (which i wonder is the cause?) I can go back to the non-closed tab and continue working. but going back to the home or shutting down would erase my progress (despite it saying saved to the cloud)
Does “Remember me.” when logging do anything? (I declined).
– i did part 2 and notice these errors in the console:
Make any change within any skillmap activity to trigger a cloud save. While in the editor, watch the cloud sync indicator at the bottom of the page. Does it show a checkmark, indicating completion of a successful save?
After making a change, switch back to the Network tab.
In the upper-left, click Filter, and type “project”. This will filter the list down to cloud operations:
Look at the Status of each listed request. Are there any that have a status other than 200 A status of 400 or greater could indicate a cloud sync failure. If cloud sync fails, it should reflect this in the UI, so I don’t expect to see failures. Still, it’s something we should rule out.
Also whenever I select a tutorial in edge it automatically opens a new tab.
this means the dev tools also have to be reapplied.
The preferences issue occurs right at the start of the tutorial.
Ok, that is a good result! It looks like there may be an issue with your stored skillmap progress. Let’s continue over email so I can look into your skillmap data directly, and this involves discussing account-specific details. I will DM you with my Microsoft email address to follow up.
