Bugs- "NEXT" player button not appearing

May 07, 2021

Mary Scott
By Mary Scott

Hi Community! 
I just built a course that uses custom next/previous triggers. I do custom instead of the navigation restrictions because I have a lot of interactivity within the course; I don't want the next button to be enabled when the slide ends but rather when the user completes the activity or clicks in a specific spot. 

I had a user get "stuck" on a slide (I think the timeline randomly froze, or maybe the trigger just didn't work), and the next button was never enabled. Everything had loaded on the screen. I have been unable to replicate the problem on my own, but the user sent a screenshot which shows the problem. 

Does anyone out there have any recommendations for avoiding these bugs where a trigger just doesn't work or the slide timeline gets stuck? Or perhaps a way to program around the bug (ie, add a bunch of triggers associated with different cue points to change the state of the next button to normal?).

Also, does anyone know: If a timeline gets stuck because of a bug, does Storyline register the timeline as paused? If so, is there an extra trigger I could create to work around this? 

Or is there even a way around these bugs or is it just a fact of life when working with Storyline? 

I've included the Storyline file of the one slide that had the issue. 

All ideas/thoughts/contributions are greatly helpful. Thank you! 

1 Reply
Mcgem Minoc
almost 3 years ago05/08/21 at 11:48 am (UTC)

Hi Mary,

Thanks for the detailed inquiry. I understand your working on a course with restricted navigation which lets learners complete all interaction before moving on. I'm also unable to replicate the issue on my end for this particular slide, the 'Cue Point' trigger you added always executed. I can't tell what could've caused the course to stall/freeze for your user just based on this one slide where you have custom triggers in place for navigation. If multiple users report the same issue I suggest you submit a case with Articulate's support engineers to do a deep dive on your project as a whole. There are some things I can suggest regarding this slide, please check my recommendations below:

  • Ensure the Menu Navigation is also restricted. This way, learners cant just select which slide they want to open which could disrupt the flow of your course. A detailed user guide is available here: How to Restrict or Lock Navigation

  • I have attached the same slide with 2 new triggers that work with object states and the variable 'Slide24Returns'. So what I did is I made a trigger to adjust 'Slide24Returns' to value 'True' only when the 'state' of all 4 boxes is 'changed', additionally a new trigger is placed for each box to change state to 'changed' upon clicking. This way, the Next button will only appear when the user has opened all 4 boxes.

Check out Articulate's user guide for Triggers here: Storyline 360: Working with Triggers

Hope this helps and good luck with the project! 

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