Engage 360 and Storyline 360 - Free Movement inside Engage while requiring full audio before clicking next interaction?

Hey Jeff,

It sounds like you have your Engage Playback mode set to Interactive, correct? As you can see from the description, this allows the user to navigate as they wish. 

I'm curious if you are utilizing the restricted navigation within Storyline or are you manually controlling the movement with layers as you mentioned above?

Hi Leslie,

Yes, the Engage mode is Interactive, and the Storyline menu is Restricted. This combination is right for our needs. Learners must complete each slide in order, but when they come to an Engage slide, they have freedom to explore in any order they wish. Once they review all Engage elements, they can then continue to the next slide. So far so good.

The problem is each slide (and each Engage slide element) has timed narration which the learner must hear before continuing. At the slide level, no problem; but on the Engage element level is where the problem occurs. The learner can click another Engage element before the narration ends on the element they are currently reviewing, thus skipping the required narration. This is what we are seeking a solution to.

While a Linear setting in the Engage element can help ensure they hear the whole narration for each element, that setting defeats the entire purpose of making the slide into an Engage for us. Letting the adult learner drive a portion of their experience is why we chose the Engage approach for those portions of the learning.

Any help?

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

With Engage you're limited to the options designated in the templates, so it does sound like building this in Storyline natively would allow it to fit your needs better. 

I'll be curious to hear if folks in the community have any other recommendations! 

Hey Ashley, 

I completely understand. I had to at least ask though right? :)

So, here was the solution in Storyline 360:

1. Build the interactions into the slide in individual layers, including the narration audio for each layer.
2. Build a button on the Base Layer for each interaction.
3. Set a trigger on each button to "Show layer Layer Name When the user clicks" the related button.
4. On each layer add a trigger "Hide layer this layer When the timeline ends." We wanted it to automatically move on after each narration.
5. On each layer I also placed a 100% transparent rectangle over the buttons on the Base layer. THIS was the main solution to the original problem. Without this rectangle in front of the buttons, the presentation acted just like the Engage interactions and would let the user click somewhere else before the narration was finished. With that invisible rectangle on top of the buttons on each slide layer, the buttons are not available, and therefore the narration plays out to the end regardless of the users actions.
6. Then on the base layer, I added conditions to the Next button trigger so it would only "Jump to next slide When the user clicks the next button or swipes next If (conditions) Button 1 state is equal to Visited and Button 2 state is equal to Visited and Button 3 state is equal to Visited and Button 4 state is equal to Visited and etc..." This prevents them from moving to the next slide before seeing all the interactive layers.

This solution allows the user to view the elements in any order they prefer. It tracks the layers they have already visited while still allowing them to review if they wish. It prevents them from missing narration on each layer, and requires they view each element before moving on to the next slide.

The only two issues are:

1. it took 2 hours to experiment with and build the 8 interactive layers and all the triggers (which is why I tried the Engage route first, but heck, the outcome was worth the extra work). 
2. and the user can click the Next button as soon as the last interactive button it selected because the Visited status changes as soon at the click on it takes place.

• We just wont advertise that and most users wont try it after having the Next button frozen on the previous 7 layers.

I would have posted the sample, but I work in Healthcare, and even I need to pace myself with the images involved. :)

Thanks

Jeff

Thanks for sharing your solution, Jeff! I'm sure other folks who run across this discussion in the future will find this really helpful. 😁

How did you restrict the user from continuing to the next slide until "reviewing all engage elements"? I am trying to figure this out, but it seems like there are no triggers associated with the engage interaction completion. I want to have a continue to next slide (in storyline) button appear after the user clicked through the imported engage interaction. Please help!!! @

Hi, Tyler. Since this is an older discussion, Jeff may no longer be subscribed. Just in case, feel free to also use the Contact Me button on his eLearning Heroes page to reach out to him directly! 🤞

Katie, I'm still here.  :)

Tyler,

I don't know if this will work with your imported Engage, but after I discovered the shortcomings of importing my attempt from Engage, I built it over in Storyline. Then I addressed the advancement issue as follows:

Since Storyline doesn't currently have variable controls over the appearance of the Next button, I just turned it off for the slide.

TO allow them to continue, I created a "Continue" button with 2 States; Normal and Revealed

1. Create the Continue button and place it offscreen
2. Create a Trigger on the Continue button to "Jump to next slide When user clicks"
3. Edit states of the Continue button and create a Revealed state, moving the Revealed button position to where you want the button when all slide actions are met.
4. Create a variable called ContinueButton and set the default value to False.
5. Create a Trigger as follows:
   • Action: Adjust Variable
   • Variable: ContinueButton
   • Operator: = Assignment
   • Value: Value -True
   • When: State
   • On: All of
     • Select all action required for slide to be considered complete. In the case where I wanted all the layers visited, I selected all the buttons I had created that led to each layer (see my post above responding to Ashley). 
     • Are: Visited

Test the daylights out of this. But it should keep the Continue button off screen until each layer is viewed.

Have fun.

Jeff