Help! - Question on Tokens & Variables - Captivate 2023

[carly_inseer]

I'm a total newbie to instructional design and working on my first LMS module. I was on a call with a company that I'm working with, and they set up a call to "review how the captivate package will emit tokens and variable substitution for different languages (13 languages)."

I have absolutely no idea what they mean by the captivate package emitting tokens... Any thoughts on this one? 

Also, does anyone have any idea on variable substitution for different languages?? 

Online resources or even a starting point would be great. Thank you!

[RodWard]

If you are indeed a "newbie" in this industry then I have to tell you that trying to get multiple languages delivered from the same Captivate module is going to be way out of your level. 

Yes it is technically possible to use variables and advanced actions to substitute text and even audio, but there is no functionality in Captivate that I am aware of to emit "tokens".  That sounds like a programming term.  You need to get more information about their technical requirements.

Even having a few different languages supported in the same Captivate module would be very challenging.  Having 13 different languages, some of which might even be languages that read from right to left would be impossible.

What has been traditionally done with Captivate for multi-language support is that you need to create a different Captivate project file for each language.  You start with your main language (e.g. English) then you make a copy of that file for each other language and export a translation file from the original that will be translated for the other language.  After the translation is done, you import that file into the language copy to change the text content.  But that doesn't automatically fix your audio, or change any images that might have embedded text.  There are lots of manual steps involved.

Bottom line...you might be wise at this stage of your career to let this one go until you have more experience.

[carly_inseer]

Thank you for the advice, Rod!

To clarify, while I am new to instructional design, I'm a product designer (helping out my small company by temporarily filling a dual-role) and have many years of software design experience. I'm finding there are a lot of transferrable skills. The solution you recommend with creating separate files is how I was initially planning to address the request for multiple languages. When they mentioned variables to create the logic, I didn't see that option anywhere in Captivate 2023, hence the question. I will suggest to the client we create different files and see if that is an acceptable solution. 

Thanks for the feedback on tokens. I know it's a term used in programming, I just didn't know if this was a term people who regularly work in Captivate are aware of and use often. I will get more info from them! Thanks.

[Lilybiri]

It is perfectly possible to create and use variables in CP2023, just FYI. It just is a bit more hidden.

[carly_inseer]

Oh, ok! I will read your post about creating variables and see if I can find them in CP2023.

[Lilybiri]

I didn't write a post about creating variables in CP2023, sorry. My blog is only about Captivate Classic.

You find them under the Project Properties. All system variables have been renamed and more than half of those available in Captivate Classic have been 'deprecated'.

[Lilybiri]

Rod already gave you very solid advice, please read it carefully. I completely agree with him, and just pop in to tell you that the All New Captivate you are using is totally unsuited for that level of complicated project. It is too limited, may appeal to a new user like you but you'll end up with many frustrations. It doesn't even have a spell checker on board.

13 languages is huge. For a small project and a limited amount of languages Captivate Classic could have been used, because it has a Branch aware functionality (missing in the most recent version). You can have a look at the example in this blog post, where I provided a quiz in 3 languages:

What is Branch Aware? - eLearning (adobe.com)

[carly_inseer]

Thank you for the reply. 

I have already regretted the choice to use the new version for this project many times. The main reasons I chose 2023 are: a) ignorance regarding its limitations, b) Captivate Classic kept crashing on my M1 Mac, and c) initially, it seemed easier (which I thought would be faster). My company is sending me a Windows machine, and I'm leaning towards just re-building the whole training in Captivate Classic due to 2023's inflexibility (even for simple reasons like the fact that I can't mirror the button padding on my client's branding guidelines because when you add padding to a button, it adds both horizontal and vertical padding OR that I can't add the client's logo to the title slide).

Thank you for sharing the blog post on how you accomplished this feature with 3 languages. I will take a look at your steps and see if I dare venture down that path!

[Lilybiri]

Congratulations! You will not be limited by Captivate Classic in the same way as you were by CP2023. Please don't hesitate to ask questions, both Rod and myself will be happy to help you out. 

You really need to check out Themes in Captivate Classic, those in CP2023 are just a joke but that is of course my personal opinion. Create a custom theme, and have the logo on the Title master slide (not available in CP2023) to be used for all future projects. Use object styles to apply the company brand to buttons and other objects, not only be limited to text styles.

https://blog.lilybiri.com/themes-are-time-savers-what-is-new-in-11-dot-5

[carly_inseer]

I am very much looking forward to it! I have a generic version of my training that I've created (because we are using it with multiple companies). For each company, the plan is to apply that company's branding. In CP 2023, you can only change ONE button's style through the theme editor (the main text + icon button style). For the circular buttons that are used to advance/reverse through the slides, I had to manually change the styles (including hover states) for 126 buttons. I actually counted the clicks to change one button. It takes 11! So it took me 1,386 clicks to apply the button branding for a new company. I even called in to suport and they said the only workaround would be to duplicate the button bar (but then you have to recreate all of the button functions). Sigh... I digress. Needless to say, I'm excited to try Captivate Classic.

[Lilybiri]

A very elaborate post, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of 6 types of buttons in Captivate Classic:

https://blog.lilybiri.com/overvew-6-button-types

For a shape button (my favourite) you can create a style, use it whenever possible. Such a button can be filled with a solid color, a gradient or a bitmap image.

Only exception: on quiz slides you cannot use it for the embedded buttons. But you can use a Transparent button, which you can make looking like your shape button used on content slides.

Wished I could offer you a crash course...

[carly_inseer]

That's great information to have - thank you! I'm sure I'll be posting a ton more questions as I learn Captivate Classic. I wish you could too... 🙂 I guess I'll have to settle for forum posts. Thanks for always being willing to help out!

[Lilybiri]

Check out my blog, you'll find answers to a lot of questions which are not answered in the official Help documentation. It was the reason I started to blog in 2008.

[carly_inseer]

Thank you, I will!