Customize/Disable "you must answer" question prompt in Storyline

Oct 03, 2012

Dear community,

Is it possible in Storyline to customize or disable the "you must answer" question prompt? I figured out how to change the various feedback components (for instance, the 'correct', and 'wrong' feedback box), but I could not find how to change of disable this promptbox.

Gerard

19 Replies
Gerard TinQ

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately the tutorial does not provide an answer.

The feedback master provides the following templates:

Slide Master

Correct Feedback Layout

Incorrect Feedback Layout

Try Again Feedback Layout

Review Feedback Layout

Thank You Feedback Layout

Blank

I could not find the "You must answer" Layout. Is there any other way to find this feedback box?

Jeanette Brooks

Hi Gerard,

You can definitely alter the wording of the message by changing your player's text labels, and you can also change the colors of the pop-up by customizing your player colors. However, other aspects of the message's visual design aren't currently editable, since the message is handled by Storyline internally rather than being controlled by feedback masters.

If you want a totally different look for your "invalid answer" message, you could create your own on a slide layer, and trigger that to appear instead of the default pop-up. Here's a look at how you could do that:

Kathy Wasson

It appears the "You must answer" popup will only engage if using "Submit" instead of "Next/Previous"? Is this correct? I have to use N/P because I want users to be able to go back and change their answers, and as far as I can tell, Submit will not let a user do that.

However, when I set "user must answer", with N/P as the triggers, the "You must answer" never pops up, and it goes on to the next slide. This seems counter intuitive.  If it is the case, this means that I have to program logic for each slide to show a custom "you must answer" message, for each slide. Am I missing something?

Lauren Connelly

Hi Kathy! 

There are a few ways to approach this. First, you could disable the navigation (previous/next) until an answer if selected. To do this, you would need to change the Slide Properties to show the previous and next buttons. 

Then, you'll want to add a trigger to change the state of the next button to normal when any of the answer choices are selected. This will be a trigger added for each answer.

Here's a quick look at this process.

Leslie McKerchie

Hi Kathy,

Glad you were able to get this working as you wanted.

The use of the Prev/Next buttons within a quiz are typically so that:

  1. The users can skip questions if needed.
  2. The answers can be changed.

This is due to the submit all at once feature vs. submitting one question at a time.

If you wanted to use this setup, you could warn users prior to submitting to be sure that they answered all the questions.

Jean-Christophe Goyette

I'm echoing comments that an Invalid Answer feedback is needed... and feels like an obvious missing feature.

What I usually do is to use a new layer with a custom design that appears when clicking the Submit button if a variable is False. The variable turns to True when the user selects an answer, and the Submit Interaction trigger also has the condition to check if the variable is True.

So basically:

  • Show Custom Invalid Answer layer when user click Submit if variable is False.
  • Adjust variable to True when radio buttons/check boxes are selected, drag/drop objects are not Normal (and either Drop Correct/Incorrect), or text field variables are not null, or such.
  • Submit Interaction when user click Submit if variable is True.
Kathy Wasson

Jean-Christophe,

That is essentially what I am doing, for now.The thing that makes this frustrating is that for this project, it means adding variables for each slide, and then logic for those variables, on a project in which I am already dealing with over 200 variables.

Another thing that makes current behavior counter-intuitive, is that we are given the choice between Requiring a user to answer, or selecting "User may skip", for a setup in which interacting with that drop-down choice does not perform in the way the choice describes.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Thanks, all. I know we've had a method outlined here for some time on how folks could set up their own invalid answer layer or prevent it from appearing altogether, but I'll bring this back up to our team to look at building that layer directly into Storyline.

We'll be sure to keep you posted if this is added to Storyline! 

Ren Gomez

Hi Royston,

Thanks for reaching out! There isn't a way to disable the Invalid Layer dialog box if you have questions slides in your course, though one option you can try is creating your own Invalid Answer layer per David Anderson's video here.

Can you also see if your DPI settings are over 100%? Try the recommended settings and see if that helps. This is what it looks like in Windows 10.

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