Desperately needed: basic advice on where to start!

I'm a basic user with no formal education on software and I'm not necessarily stuck IN a project so much as I am stuck trying to figure out where to BEGIN with a project! There is literally so much to learn and do with the Creative Cloud (I subscribe) that I can see like 3 different ways to start what I need to start and I don't know which one is going to be best, so here's the situation: I need to build what amounts to an interactive decision flow...two examples are below that I found, going from basic to fancy.

javascript - HTML based troubleshooting decision tree - Stack Overflow

https://live.yworks.com/demos/complete/decisiontree/index.html

At work people have trouble doing their jobs because there are hundreds and hundreds of standardized procedures telling you how to do their jobs, but the process of FINDING the right procedure can be pretty rough...especially when you don't know what you don't know and you're digging for articles and you're like "Did I find them all? Do I keep looking?" The decision flow itself will guide a user to find a link to the procedure or procedures they need, depending on how they answer a series of clickable questions. Just like above.

Here's my one criteria: because of site security concerns and red tape, the decision tree has to be its own encapsulated, self-enclosed pdf. It can't be on the web. It can't be on our intranet. It has to be wrapped in that pdf and that pdf cannot in any way call outside of itself for more information. And Acrobat can DO that, right? And that's freakin cool!

But...where to START? I know the pdf can take some html content and it works. I know you can load a fair amount of javascript in it and it works. So I don't know where to start:

Do I build it in Dreamweaver as HTML and create the pdf in Acrobat via Create -> pdf from Web Page?

Do I build it in Animate as AS3, export as a SWF and load that into a pdf via Acrobat or InDesign?

Do I just figure out how to do it in Javascript and import the whole mess into Acrobat?

Do I go the SVG route in Illustrator and try to load THAT into Acrobat or InDesign?

I literally don't know what will work, what won't, if all work or none will. (insert deep, painful sigh here)

I don't care about how fancy it looks, it just needs to be functional FIRST and THEN I'd be happy with presentable. As far as my personal skillset, if it helps you answer, I've been able to build stuff in the past but only with code to model off of. Definitely a kinesthetic learner/doer.

Any advice you could give me would be INCREDIBLY appreciated...THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! : )