A fatal error or Uncommitted Data indicates that the communication between the lesson and the USAV Academy has been broken. There are a multitude of factors that can contribute to a fatal error which would include the user's environment, USAV Academy software, server hardware, etc.. More often than not, the issue is linked to the learner's user environment (computer settings, antivirus settings, browser add-ons / extensions).
When communication between the lesson and the Academy is broken, your course GO buttons turns into a disk icon and a trashcan icon. The user can either click the Save (disk) icon to save the data and continue where he or she left off or click the discard (trashcan) icon to delete the data and start from the beginning. Until one of these options is selected, the user's attempt will not be recorded.
When a user launches a course, the Academy creates a holding file of the lesson data. Once the user "closes" the lesson correctly, that file is then committed to the Academy. The user does not necessarily have to have completed the course, just closed the course and the file will commit/save to the Academy. If a user loses connection (browser crashed, computer was shut off, the workstation was logged out/turned off, power outage, javascript error, etc.) the lesson could not be formally "closed," which leaves the data uncommitted and left in that holding file.
When a user logs back in, they will see the save or discard options. If a user clicks save, the holding file containing the information up until the user lost connection will then commit / save to the Academy. For most courses, then you click that save icon, the data up to the latest bookmark/commit will be retrieved. We frequently see these issues when users launch a lesson and leave their computer for an extended time while the lesson is still active. They return some time later to complete the lesson, however during their extended time away, the connection between the lesson and LMS was broken.
We recommend that users close the lesson to save their lesson data before leaving the lesson for an extended time period. By closing the lesson, it saves the user's data. Not closing the lesson before leaving is like writing a term paper in Word and not clicking Save before walking away from your computer (anything can happen).