Variables, click boxes, show play bar

[danielb51742821]

Hi,

Current updated Cptivate 9 , scorm html5.

I've looked around on the forum how to handle my issue. I found the following forum, which helped and turned a light on in my head, but my problem still needs to be tailored more.....

Need to Click All Click Boxes to Continue

So, what I have already are 6 click boxes using shared advanced action to show the appropriate images and text boxes, and hide the unwanted objects. These work as expected. The client has required to use the captivate play bar they've used in previous courses, but to hide it on this slide on enter until all click boxes are clicked.

I considered changing the advanced actions to use their own personalized conditional actions by way of variables to show the play bar. (using the 'if 1 =1' concept) However, there seems to be conflict with the original intended show hide object actions. In other words I cant think of a way to show the playbar when all click boxes are clicked AND show/hide the objects as they already are set to do.

Any advice?

[Lilybiri]

I posted recently a blog post similar to that with two possible workflows, but it is created in CP2017. Have a look:

Force Clicking Hotspots: Comparison 2 Workflows - eLearning

Difference is indeed in the first decision, which is pretty easy in CP2017, but you need to use the condition IF 1=1 in that case because you don't have that feature yet.

Instead of showing the Next button after all variables have been toggled, you can show the Playbar.

[danielb51742821]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. It certainly did turn a light on, but I'm still in a little jam. I will do my best to explain with images. In all, my click boxes hide/show as expected, but the captivate play bar never appears. I am going to double check my work here, but I really thought I was on to something with your advice. Thanks in advance. I have a feeling my mistake is in the On Enter conditional action (bullet 2).

I have 6 click boxes. Each Click box shows an image and a text box. After visiting your page, I decided to take the following approach.

• First I made 6 variables (A1-A6) to track all 6 click boxes. Value =0

• Then, on Slide Enter a conditional adv action is executed. If all 6 variables = 1, show playbar, else hide play bar. (Not sure why this view says "Untitled" when the action is named "Slide9OnEnter"

• Each click box has an advanced action to Assign the corresponding variable with 1, show the corresponding image and text box, and hide all other text boxes and images not related to the click box.

• An image of the timeline:

[Lilybiri]

Was bit sighing.... I would so much like to give training on advanced actions, am convinced it would save a lot of hours for many users.

I will not discuss how the advanced actions can be improved, but your primary problem is understanding the link between events and actions. Have a blog post about that as well but most users only want video which is totally unsuitable for explaining concepts. Your conditional action is linked to the On Enter event of a slide, which means it is only executed when the slide is entered. 

In my blog post I did create conditional actions where your standard action was combined with a conditional action in an action with TWO decisions. In that case it is triggered by the Success event of each click box. That is a totally different situation. 

You are not yet on CP2017 where such a combination is easy. In previous versions you need a Conditional action, with TWO decisions. The first one is a mimicked standard action by using the condition 'IF 1 is equal to 1' (always correct), the second decision has the conditional action which you are at this moment triggering by the On Enter event.

BTW Untitled is the name of the Decision, not of the action.

[danielb51742821]

This is where I'm confused:

I need the advanced action to perform 3 things. (1) Show/Hide objects, (2) assign the click box with the variable to =1, and (3) count objects with variables, and if all variables = 1, then show playbar. It seems like a conflict. It seems like it can do either 1 or 3, but not both. I tried to simplify this by creating a new slide with only 2 of the click boxes and it corresponding objects, but no luck. It seems like I need it to do something unconditionally (#1 and #2) and something conditionally (#3).

I did learn something from your blog - I did not know you could group something, and have an action hide the group, but show an individual object from that hidden group. This will save a lot of hiding rows in the action.

I will keep trying to get this advanced conditional action to work. 

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

I tried to describe what you have to do, and it will work perfectly, but it looks like you don't understand the workflow as described in that recent post.

First decision = standard action:

    IF 1 == 1

         Hide Group

         Show item

          Assign variable with

Second decision

     Check all variables

[danielb51742821]

You are absolutely correct. I did not understand the captivate "decision" concept, and that they could be stacked. I thought "decision" was the separate "If" lines in the conditional action ("decide if...." is what my brain grabbed, hence the envisioned conflict). I just built my first one, but need to build five more to complete the work and test it. My first one looks like this now. Thanks for your advice and patience. I will post later my results.

[Lilybiri]

Thought I already offered you the link to the full description of the 'new' Advanced Actions dialog box in CP2017. Although it is bit different, it has also the complete 'glossary' on board, which could help maybe?

In my mind having an excellent Glossary in this portal should be priority 1. Daily I lose too much time trying to understand wrongly used terms and explaining the correct terms. That mostly offers me insults... bit fed up with that as well.

[danielb51742821]

Captivate could rename the decision boxes to Decision 1, Decision 2.... to make that a little more intuitive. "Untitled" meant nothing to me until an hour ago. I know you mentioned that Untitled were decisions earlier in this post, but that was when most of my brain was still thinking they were If statements. Thanks again.

[Lilybiri]

In all my blog posts where I use more than one decision, that name will have been customized as you could see in the post for which I offered a link at the start. Too bad that not all 'experts' show good practice in their tutorials.  Lately I see appearing 'Shared Advanced Actions' all over the place, wrong term, not used in Help. It is Shared actions vs Advanced actions.

I'm used to label the first decision in your case as 'Always' because the commands will always been done. 

Whenever a term is used in the Help documentation (which no one ever looks at) I will use that official term. That is the case for 'decisioin'. When a term is lacking I have invented some (like micro-navigation).

[danielb51742821]

And I just realized you can double click to rename. I've learned so much already today.

[Lilybiri]

Sure, not different from other applications.

Will soon offer a 'canned' or a 'personalized' training for advanced/shared actions and variable use.