Adobe Captivate 8 Advanced Actions - Menu pages

[margaretd6417944]

Hello.

I have followed along with Rod Ward's terrific tutorial on creating advanced actions (http://www.infosemantics.com.au/adobe-captivate/template/03-dynamic-menu-page) and my test module is not functioning correctly.  The basic navigation works properly - clicking each button takes you to the proper slide and then clicking the "return" button brings you back to the Main Menu, however the feedback checkmarks do not appear when returning to Main Menu. In addition, the "Congratulations" caption and "Continue" button do not appear once all sections have been viewed and the TOC and navigation bar are not disabled.

The checkmarks, Congratulations caption and Continue button are all set with "Not visible in output" and I have set the On Enter actions for slides 2-4 to assign the appropriate items with "1."

I am wondering if it has something to do with the Timeline and pauses? Any help would be welcome - I'm sure I am missing something simple!

Here are screenshots:

[Lilybiri]

Rod will be able to help you more (my approach is different and I use shared actions + states), but you have to make sure that the pausing points are all at the same time, which is not the case on the screenshots: I see small differences. Here is some reading about pausing the timeline:

Pausing Captivate's Timeline - Captivate blog

[margaretd6417944]

Thank you for the additional information.

[Lilybiri]

Be sure to have the pausing points at the same location or you could have problems: the playhead could remain blocked in a part that is already inactive for some buttons.

[RodWard]

Having more than one interactive object set to pause the timeline at the same frame is pointless.  You might as well just pick one of them to be set to pause and turn pausing off for all the others.  That will make things simpler, because then if you need to change the pause point, you only have to change it on ONE object, not adjust all of them.

[Lilybiri]

Everyone has his work flows. Since I often disable or hide buttons, and want to be sure that the slide remains paused, I prefer to have all pausing points at the same location.  It doesn't take more time than taking the pause away, since timing can be done for all in one action: select all buttons and change in Timing Properties. Even easier when they are grouped.

[RodWard · Accepted solution]

The most common error people make when creating these types of interactions is that they forget to set the On Slide Enter event of the menu slide to execute the Conditional Action.  That's usually why nothing is changing on the menu slide.

[RodWard]

By the way Lieve.  Now that Captivate has Object States, I also use them for Menu slides.  You and I don't differ in that approach.  But the tutorial that Margaret is referring to was created well before Object States came out.

I also use Shared Actions when they would genuinely save time. But in this particular interaction they wouldn't really add any benefit.

[Lilybiri]

Rod, there are always several ways of reaching the goal. I only tried to explain why I didn't really look at the advanced actions (because it is your approach that the OP wanted to use, just fine) but to warn about the chaotic placement of the pausing points.  Pretty common, not understanding pausing points, thought it could help to point at that with a link to an article.

[margaretd6417944]

That was exactly the issue, Rod! Once I assigned the On Enter action on the Menu slide to execute the advanced action, everything worked as it should. Thank you so much for the answer!