Aggregating Story Files for Single Project

Jan 19, 2013

I am developing a very large project, where each scene, because it is full of video clips and interactivity and thus huge in size, is saved as a separte Story file.  In total, there will be about seven of these "modules" that make up the full course.  I understand that Captivate has an "aggregator" product that allows this type of development and then pulls or collects all the files and packages them together.  

Does Storyline/Articulate have such a tool?  If not, what does anyone recommend to manage this type of course?   

And can there be one file that is essentially the "menu," where instead of branching to a scene within the file, actually opens a different story file?

Thanks so very much!!!

Helen

14 Replies
Cory Calderon

Bruce,

I have a similar problem and wonder if someone can guide me.  I have a menu and want to link in different story .story file.

Said differently, I have six lessons I want to be able to click on a button to get to.  I've tried to put them all in one folder to create a path to link them but the url isn't working. 

Can someone guide me on how to do this?

Helen Jones

Sue, thanks for making what I wanted better said!  That's what I want too!  I plan to host my program in Articulate Online and I don't know if the participants just coming back to the source of the files is enough, but a cleaner, "menu" type approach would be best.  They won't recieve a "certificate of compeltion" until we are able to verify all modules are complete.

Bruce, what can Storyline do along those lines?

Rebecca Shamblin

I had to solve this problem as well - I started with one huge file, but Storyline started freezing when I tried to save it.  I ended up making a separate Story file for each tutorial, and making one big menu Story that called each of them.  I experimented with web objects for awhile, so I could use the Menu feature in Storyline.  Unfortunately, you cannot use relative links with web objects (instead of jumping to "http://www.alwaysthisurl.com/xyz.html", I needed to tell Storyline to look in the same folder as wherever the current story file is for a file named "xyz.html").  This was a dealbreaker (we don't have an LMS), so I had to start over again!

I ended up using the Jump to URL/File trigger, which DOES allow for relative links.  Then I put all my output folders into one megafolder and gave that to our tech guys.  For example:

Overall folder name: Storyline_Components

in this folder are the following sub-folders, straight from Storyline publishing:

My Menu output

Tutorial A output

Tutorial B ouput

Tutorial C output

Within the My Menu story, I have buttons for each tutorial that use Jump to URL/File triggers.  They use links like this:  ..//Tutorial%20A%20output/story.html

The two periods and backslashes are the relative part.  If you know where your files will always be hosted, you can go ahead and put the full URLs.

I hope that helps - it took me a LONG time to work out this solution!

Helen Jones

Awesome sauce!  Thank you (and thank you too, Rebecca for your solution) - I can guess it is actually a bit easier in Storyline since you just pick a quizzing slide to kick off the module.  I think this will work well.  I haven't use Artiuclate Online yet, but I'm suspecting that from the administrative side, there is a way to see who has completed all and thus manage the course wrap up. 

Cory Calderon

Hi Rebecca,

I tried a test file with your suggestion.  When the new browser opens I get an error message back-any chance you can advise me on what to try next?

Also I noticed that the url has more back slashes in it--when I try to edit them out-articulate puts them back in.

Any thoughts?

Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0)
Timestamp: Wed, 1 May 2013 22:25:40 UTC


Message: Invalid character
Line: 1
Char: 1
Code: 0
URI: file:///C:/Users/suecze/Desktop/Testbutton/menutest%20output/story_content/external_files/story_content/story.js


Message: Object expected
Line: 162
Char: 2
Code: 0
URI: file:///C:/Users/suecze/Desktop/Testbutton/menutest%20output/story_content/external_files/story.html

Cory Calderon

After much playing around and a little help from my friend, I figured out what I was doing wrong so I want to share it.  It was similar to what Rebecca said with a bit of a twist.  When I published the main .story file, I had to nest my .story files into the main .story file.

Said differently, I had to publish the main movie, and drage and drop the linked movie folder into the main movie folder. I made a picture of it (below). 

The issue with the error message above was a path issue. I found if I edited the trigger using the insert menu, I was able to type it in, instead of using the browse function and it kept out all the extra /// .

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Rebecca,

Thanks for chiming back in, and we always recommend testing the published content within the intended publish environment. There are some web servers included below that you could use as a testing platform: 

  • Tempshare: This is a free service provided by Articulate for testing Storyline content. Note: Uploaded files will be deleted after 10 days.
  • Amazon S3: Amazon S3 offers free hosting with generous usage limits. If you go over your limit, you'll be charged a graduated fee.
  • Dropbox: Place your published output in the Public folder in your Dropbox account to share it with others.
  • Google Drive: Change the story.html file to index.html, and set the sharing permissions to PublicHere's how.
Lauren Connelly

Hi Michele!

I'm happy to step in and help! Since this post is dated I want to make sure I'm providing the most up-to-date details!

We don't have an updated version of this tutorial so I'll describe a few workarounds for Storyline 360.

The initial question was:

How can you simulate course sequencing?

Here's what I'd suggest:

  • Text Entry Fields with a Trigger
    • Add a text entry field on the first slide that requires the user to type in a specific answer given to them at the end of the previous module. 
  • Variables
    • I like to use True/False variables to determine when a learner can access a certain slide. For example, set the variable equal to true when the user completes a previous scene/slide.

I'd love to hear other ways the community has created a similar interaction in Storyline 360! Keep us posted on what works for you, Michele!

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