Engage 13 - next button

Yes - I have the properties set so that the user can move about the engage piece in any order and leave at any time. I have also set the next button in the "Slide properties" to go to the slide following the engage piece, but the next button goes through each of the segments of the engage piece until they have all been clicked on and then moves to the next slide.  I would like the learner to have the option to hit that next button and go to the next slide regardless of whether or not all of the segments of the engage piece have been clicked on.  The old engage worked this way.  Thanks for your help on this.  Jan

Hi Jan! I apologize as I was not understanding your question before, but I do now. Yes, previously there were two sets of controls. The update allowed a unified player to allow only one set of controls and seamless user navigation. The pieces are treated like 'slides' and that is why the next button performs this way.

So are you saying that there is no way for the user to click to the next "slide"?  That if they revisit an earlier marker/tab, the Next button will always take them to the next marker/tab instead of the next slide?

I have a user that keeps telling me that the Engage slide locks up/will not let him out.  Now I know what it is -- he is trying to get to the next slide using the Next button, but is not on the last marker.  This is a serious problem for those of us that have been using Engage for several years -- it defeats the purpose if users have to page through all of the markers/tabs.  It isn't user-friendly to instruct them to click the next named slide on the Menu tab to move past the interaction or to click through all of the markers/tabs to get to the next slide.

Is there a way to work around this??

Lisa, that is by design. If you would like to submit a feature request about wanting this functionality, you are welcome to do so. I am not aware of a work-around. The user could jump to a particular slide in the menu if you are concerned about navigation.

Leslie,

I have to agree with Jan & Lisa, This was a great feature in '09 and to have it taken out has caused me to revamp 50+ courses.  I had the FAQ Engage Interaction prior to the quiz with a Review of the material in most of my courses.  I certainly don't want them to be required to go through everyone before going to the quiz.  I am not sure how I will work around this one.  Engage Interactions are now only good if the user is required to go through each step of the interaction.  No, I don't want to place it as a tab.  Yes, I did submit a feature request but don't want to wait a few years for the next version.

Thanks for the feedback Ke Lo and for submitting the feature request.

Yes I agree that this is a big change and one that does not make the use of the engage elements nearly as useful or flexible as they used to be. 

I just posted a separate question on this as well.  This is a huge problem!  I had a training that included a "frequently asked questions" engage interaction.  It is searchable by default and the user can scroll through the questions.  In previous versions if they clicked the next or previous buttons they would go to the slide of my choice (in my case back to the main menu).  With the current behavior they have to advance through every FAQ before they can get out.  They are pretty much stuck in a black hole with no intuitive way to exit. 

In the past I also had a Large Green button at the top right of the engage interaction that said "Main Menu".  If they clicked on the button it would exit them out of the interaction.  This functionality would solve the problem but I can't find anywhere to do this either.  It really renders all my Engage interactions in this course useless. 

My workaround.  This will not help everyone, but it may help some people at least get by.  I took my existing engage interactions and turned them into "Player Tabs" that show up at the top of the training at all times.  This allows my employees to click on "FAQ" or "Tips" or "Definitions" at anytime during the training.  When they click on the menu item the engage interaction pops over the existing slide.  BUT the interaction has a little red X in the right corner by default that allows the viewer to quickly exit out of the interaction.  This way they can view what they want and then continue on.  It would be better if we could get some native functionality but that at least allows me to still use the interactions today.  Hope that is helpful.

If it helps put this in the feature request cue, I agree that completely altering that function is definitely not ideal.  I now have to go in and either make these interactions "mandatory to view all parts" or do something completely different.

This will greatly limit my use of the Engage program for future courses.

Thanks for this thread, I have just discovered this issue.  I am going to have to remove the next button and force the user to go to the slide bar to navigate, and that does disrupt the flow.  I will put in a request too. Sonya

I am glad to see that I am not the only one that is completely frustrated by the way the new integrated player was designed to interact with Engage.  In my mind it is equivalent to rolling out a new version of QuizMaker that doesn't track a participant's score...it is so crazy that it makes you wonder what happened during the design and beta testing process.

I too have a lot of courses that used Engage and my clients want them upgraded to Studio '13 but never intended the Engage interactions to be linear or to "trap" the user in them (viewing items they already looked at) unless they click on the title of the next slide in the Menu tab.  For clients that must upgrade their courses to Studio '13 before the integrated player design gets thought through more, we've been leaving tab interactions and process interactions as is, because participants will probably click them in order (top to bottom) or (left to right) and not get "trapped" in the interaction, but for labeled graphics and other interactions that participants would not look at items in order, we are changing our instructions to tell participants to click the Next button and view the interaction items in order.

I have submitted a change request for this and I am hoping that this is the top priority for the next bug fix / enhancement to Studio '13.  Otherwise, I think I might start looking at other products for future course development.

If you want to see another major goof in Studio '13, record audio in Presenter on an Engage or QuizMaker slide.  The seekbar will not track the audio embedded in Presenter, it will only track the audio if it is embedded in Engage or QuizMaker.  Now you might think that is no big deal...but we've found that it is hard to get the audio embedded in Engage or QuizMaker to have the same quality as the audio in Engage.  And if you want some major fun, try to find where you can change the audio quality in QuizMaker '13...

Hi Brian,

Thanks very much for sharing your feedback, both here and with our developers. We do take your input seriously, as well as your requests. I recommend sharing the feature request form with any of your colleagues that are working with this as well - the more information we have on the functionality and how it would affect your projects, the better we can gauge demand and usefulness for the feature. 

I did read through your personal feature request and I wanted to thank you for being so detailed - we appreciate the information. 

I do apologize for the frustration. Studio '13 is still a fairly new product and I'm sure there will be a lot of changes, additions and updates in the future. We want to make sure that you're working with the best product possible and with your feedback, as well as other customer's feedback, I believe we'll be able to do so.

Also, I see where you've spoken with our support engineers on the audio issue you mentioned - this option for Quizmaker '13 is available through the "Publish" >> (Select Publish output type) >> "Quality" (reference for anyone else that would like this information). 

Thanks!

I'm in MAJOR agreement here ... this and the fact I cannot create SWF files using Articulate and "pluck" the SWF file from the "data" folder and insert it into an Engage tab (like creating an intro mini-movie for each Engage) is CRAZY limiting. I'm sincerely seeing more "cons" than "pros" in my upgrade. :(

***** UPDATE *****

For anyone interested I came up with my own -- pain in the butt but functional -- work around:

Instead of Engage I re-created the "look and feel" of the Engage Tab Interaction in PowerPoint: my 9 tabs on the side, my intro slide with my SWF narrator visible, etc. Then just created hyperlinks on each button to a new slide that looks darn close to the Intro but with the info that would have been on the Tab Interaction. For the nine new slides each Forward button will branch to the same place (a "home page") so learner won't know they are on various slides.

WAY too much work to get what I want but at least when the learner hits the FORWARD button it does like it's supposed to do!

And I will add my two cents - I have no idea who came up with this idea, but it was NOT from the user's perspective. This change in Engage makes Engage '13 almost unusable, IMO. My clients are complaining about it. It needs to be fixed, and soon (and yes - I have put in a feature request).

Michel

I add my voice to the chorus. Not only is this a bad idea from the user's perspective, it also violates basic principles of ISD and common sense. We are trying to deliver engaging (sorry for the pun) interactions that let the learner exercise some control and then in the end we force them to click through the whole thing again just to go on with the course. I thought I might work around the problem by setting the branching for next and prev to the specific slide rather than "next", but it doesn't make any difference...it still does the exact same thing. So, to me, it looks like they way "next" and "prev" function within engage is already have a different than the way they operate in presenter,  so why can't we just have a good design instead of a really bad design. I'm trying to do a simple refresh of a course and it has turned into a nightmare! I have put in a feature request, but I can't sit around for 4 years waiting for it....which is how long we had to wait for the "integrated player" we now have which, IMO, has problems that are MUCH MORE SERIOUS than the ones we had before with players within players.

My favourite engage interaction has always been those buttons you click on to reveal info (can't remember the name), but I really don't like the look and feel of it anymore. 

How do we know when bug fixes and updates are available?

Thanks Sonya

Hi Sonya!

By default the programs will check for updates at Start Up and we post on the blogs, forums, and the knowledgebase when we have updates as well

I'm going to add my voice to this. This change by itself renders Engage, IMO, unusable. It needs to be fixed - and soon. My clients are not amused...and that means it has the potential to cost me money and customer satisfaction.

Yup. I'm where you are Michel.

ARTICULATE PEEPS:  Any formal response to this one? I don't see this MAJOR feature miss addressed in the latest March 04, 2014 release and, aside from Leslie's comment on "software checks for updates on start up" no one has addressed this concern.

PLEASE ADVISE. I have a client who -- after seeing this functionality -- wants to scrap my instructional design and start over. I have 8 Engage interactions and REALLY don't want to rebuild these with the work-around I came up with (simple slides with hyperlinks that look like Engage tabs). Like Michel I'm about to lose revenue because of a "feature unenhancement."

Hi Steve!

This change was as a result of the unified player with the release of Studio '13.

We have encouraged users to submit feature requests on this subject, but I have no update to provide as to if or when this will change.

I agree with everyone that this is a problem that needs to be solved ASAP.  We shouldn’t have to live with the design feature (aka problem) of a “unified player” to make this product work properly.

For what it’s worth, I have used the following workaround for Labeled Graphics, Bulletin Boards and Checklists interactions.  Granted it’s not very elegant but it works.

Bottom line:  The trick is to direct your learner to the very last step of the interaction (through a hyperink) and then tell them to click the next button.

Here are the specifics using a Checklist as an example.

1. Make sure that “Allow user to leave interaction” is set to “at anytime” at the Engage properties window.

2. For the very last step in the interaction, the “Summary” step, I inserted an arrow icon (use whatever you like) or simply used text and labeled it “Exit.”    I added a description to the Summary step, “Click the ‘Next’ button to advance to the next slide.”

3. For each of the regular steps, I added a statement, “Click Here to exit.” at the end of the narrative.  I hyperlinked “Here” in that statement to go to the last step in the Engage interaction (the “Summary” step). 

Thus, if a person is in any of the checklist steps and wants to exit, he/she simply clicks the “Click Here to exit” hyperlink which takes them to the very last step in the interaction (the “Summary” or “Exit” step) and they then click the “Next” button to exit the Engage interaction and continue on in the course.

Hope this helps until Articulate fixes the problem, and yes, IT IS A PROBLEM.

This issue has come up with all of our new and migrated courses using Studio 13. Our course pilots have consistently shown users struggle with the navigation on the Engage slides. Feedback from our users has been consistent and includes comments like:

"For all of these interactive slides, the “Next” button makes you re-do all of the arrow circles. Is there a way to avoid this duplication?"

"it’s cumbersome to have to click the “next” button 5 times to get to the next slide."

I was hoping there would be a manageable workaround or update to resolve this issue by now. This usability issue discourages me from using the engage interactions which were very compelling and effective in 09, and a big reason we chose Articulate over the other elearning development tools. I consider myself a loyal Articulate customer and promote it on campus regularly, so I truly hope some good comes from this post in the near future. I'd hate to have to consider another e-learning tool like Captivate, Snap or Softchalk which many of our other departments are using. And yes -- I've submitted a feature request for what it's worth.