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How to Number Randomized Question Bank Slides in Storyline 360

NicoleLegault1's avatar
NicoleLegault1
Community Member
6 years ago

In the past, numbering slides in a randomized Storyline 360 question bank was doable but required quite a bit of manual setup. This is because the process included creating variables and setting up triggers for each and every question slide. That process has gotten a whole lot quicker and easier with the Insert Slide Number feature available in Storyline 360. This feature allows you to pop in the slide number in one click, no triggers or variables needed. Have a look at how it works in this example:

View Example | Get Download

Let’s have a look at how quick and easy it is to accomplish this. 

Step 1: Create Your Question Slides

The first step is to create the question slide you want to include in your question bank. Be sure to add an area on the slide where you can reference the question number. 

As you can see in the example below, I’ve included text that says “Question /5”. 

The actual slide number will appear before the “/5,” as in slide 1 out of 5 or slide 2 out of 5. Remember: the slide number will be different every time the learner goes through the course, because these slides will be pulled in randomly from a question bank. I need the slide number to be pulled in dynamically, and this is where I’ll use the Insert Slide Number feature. I’ll start by placing my cursor inside the text field where I want the slide number to appear.

Next you’re going to head to the Insert tab on the Storyline ribbon and click on the Slide Number drop-down arrow.

From the drop-down menu, you’ll select the More... option, which will open up the Insert Slide Number window.

In this window, you want to select Project Order, and then Slide Number in Scene from the Insert drop-down, as indicated above. When you’ve inserted the slide number, your slide will look like this: 

Now you can duplicate this question slide and update the question text and answers to create all the question slides you want to include in your question bank. 

Step 2: Create Your Question Bank 

Once you’ve created the question slides, you can create a new question bank and copy the existing question slides into the bank. 

You can also adjust your Attempts and Points for each question slide here in the Question Bank view. 

Step 3: Insert Slide Draw 

The last step is to insert your Slide Draw into your project. The Slide Draw is what will pull questions from the question bank. 

It’s important to note that the Slide Draw should be the first slide in the scene, because the questions in the bank use the Slide Number in Scene option. Once you’ve got it set up, you can preview your project to test out the question bank and see your slide numbering in action.

There you have it! That’s how easy it is to set up automatic slide numbering for random question slides with the awesome Insert Slide Number feature in Storyline 360. Have you used the Insert Slide Number feature in your Storyline 360 projects? If yes, let me know how and why in the comments below!


Want to try something you learned here, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial, and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.

Published 6 years ago
Version 1.0
  • When I click on the Insert tab on the Storyline ribbon I don't see the Slide Number feature.
    • JoshuaBruck's avatar
      JoshuaBruck
      Community Member
      You have to select Project Order to be able to see that option.
  • I have a use case that is the opposite of this :)

    We have custom JS that lets users leave feedback on individual slides, and we send the slide number as an identifier for each slide. In a course this works fine because we can use Project.SlideNumber (some resource slides are hidden in the menu), but when using this in an exam with a random draw of questions from a pool, Project.SlideNumber always increments sequentially, as opposed to using the fixed slide number that's next to the slide title, for example "Q1.8"

    Project.SlideTitle is unique per slide and doesn't change when the questions are shuffled, but it's often a fairly cumbersome string that isn't that easy to identify a particular slide with.

    Slide.Id is a unique identifier, but it's a whole bunch of random characters that doesn't help us identify a slide, unless we build a custom index for each exam that we have.

    I just tried setting a variable to Project.SlideNumber at timeline start, but that just gave a sequential number.

    Is there a way to add a fixed slide number that refers to the slide order in the Story view? Thanks!
    • PeteBrown-651d6's avatar
      PeteBrown-651d6
      Community Member
      I wonder if you could have an off-screen, inaccessible element on each screen, e.g., a text box, and give it a unique but meaningful and readily identifiable text value, e.g., '!MyQuestion12'. Potentially your javascript could iterate through the html elements on any given screen looking for your hidden element, e.g., something that begins with '!MyQuestion...'. You could then tag/report that unique text value with the feedback left.

      Depending on how closely tied your unique text values were to the actual storyline screen (i.e., would this unique text value accurately point to which screen it was), you would either inherently know which screen the feedback was referring to or you could do a simple search in Storyline to find the value.

      Maybe there's something in there to help? I've seen lots of examples of iterating through html elements looking for alt texts etc. Good luck!
  • You could define your own custom slide identifier as a string variable like feedbackSlideID that you update per slide. You could even set it to equal the Project.SlideNumber for most cases. Your JavaScript just needs to get the one variable from the player. You could also publish the course with a text box that shows the feedbackSlideID during review which then it gets hidden for final delivery.
    • JimArbon-8875a0's avatar
      JimArbon-8875a0
      Community Member
      Thanks for the replies and suggestions.

      I already tried to set a custom variable to Project.SlideNumber, but it doesn't keep its proper slide number - whichever question is first in the draw is '1.1', the second is '1.2' etc.

      We could set a variable like feedbackSlideID that we update by hand on each slide, or Pete's suggestion of creating a unique string with an identifier on the end on each slide, but we have too many questions in too many exams to make the juice worth that squeeze :)

      It might just be one of those annoying Storyline things that we just learn to live with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • No I meant for the "regular" slides in the course have feedbackSlideID default to = Project.SlideNumber but on all the quiz slides set it manually so on the first question in the pool set feedbackSlideID = "q01" or something similar so even when it gets randomized you always know it was the first question in the pool. If you have multiple pools you could prefix "p01" etc so feedbackSlideID = "p01q01". this should let you know exactly which question slide received the feedback no matter where it came from. It really isn't that much work to just copy and paste and modify the trigger. I have done it for courses with over 200 questions randomized over 6 pools.

    Edit: or you could just disable the feedback option on quiz slides lol
  • I getcha. Still a lot of work doing that on every question slide, which is what it may end up coming to, but just seeing if there's a built-in way or other kind of workaround before doing that :)