feedback master button states not being inherited by feedback layers

I've also been experiencing this issue for a long time now. I've been working around it by dragging the feedback master buttons off the screen and creating my own buttons on my slide feedback layers, but this is time-consuming and I'm not understanding how this can be called a "master" when it really doesn't work at all as far as the buttons go. Also, as I'm producing templates for others to use, this issue is of pretty major concern.

I understand the need to prioritise fixes, but I'm not understanding what is meant by "a fairly low impact bug". 

Just wondering if there has been any progress on this...

Hi Dianne, 

This issue is still open with our team, so I don't have an update to share yet, but I wanted to clarify the low impact part.

Our team uses a lot of information to help us prioritize bugs and one of the things considered is the viability of other workarounds. In this instance, as you shared you could create your own buttons on the feedback layers instead of using the built-in ones, and the custom ones should carry through to your question slides and their layers. 

The issues Peter and Carl reported were also connected to the additional states added to the feedback master button, and not having those states or associated colors carry over into the actual feedback layer.

If that's not what you're running into, let me know. We'd want to take a look at your project file to make sure we're clear on what the issue is so that we can document it for our team to continue investigating. 

Thanks for this Ashley - but my dilemma is that you can't create your own custom buttons on the feedback master - well, you can, but the trigger functionality does not carry through to the question slides and their layers, so you have to create the custom buttons on each layer of each question slide. This is OK (barely!) for individual courses, but less than ideal for templates. Here's why - if you go to create a new slide and choose one of the question slide layouts, you have to manually add the custom buttons to each feedback layer, so in the case of a template I need to provide instructions to tell the user to duplicate an existing question slide, not create one using the insert new slide option. In my mind, this is going a bit too far away from the idea of rapid authoring when you have to do so much customisation because this doesn't work.

I've attached a file here with this all set up - although this isn't hard to replicate. This is an out-of-the-box, new project file created in Storyline 360. You will see that I can't use any of the custom buttons, even though they appear on the feedback layers, because triggers don't work like they do with the built-in buttons. I've added a second feedback master and used this for one slide and the same issues apply.

Also, you'll see that the same issue that Peter and Carl have reported is still there - ie the built-in states for the button on the master slide don't carry through to the feedback slide layers.

Additionally, (I may as well detail all of the issues I've been working around!), if you use the button tools format menu in the feedback master and apply a button style, the default text on the button remains grey, no matter which style you choose and this carries through to the slide feedback layers, which then have to be individually customised - and this can't be done by applying a button style either. Added to this, if you want to apply formatting at the feedback master level to the button text (ie. uppercase), this doesn't flow through to the feedback slide layouts either and again, needs to be manually adjusted at the slide level on each feedback layer.

My latest workaround (and I've tried a multitude of these) is to try and use the built-in buttons, but then customise them one by one on the feedback slide layers - also a time-consuming process, and one that I also need to communicate to users of my templates. 

Thanks so much for sharing a sample file Dianne.

If we can take this one step at a time, that'd be great. I want to understand what you are experiencing and be sure that we help you out here.

I'm not clear on where you are experiencing the error or which button you want to work. I imagine it's the button on the master slide, so that's what I took a look at and it seems to be working well. 

Here is my screen recording, so let me know what step I'm missing or misunderstood in your process.

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this screen recording Leslie.

Sorry - I didn't have all of my details quite right - what I was trying to point out is that if I want to try and replicate what the built-in button does on the feedback master I needed to add a trigger to the button on the master slide of the feedback master, as you correctly pointed out.

This works as per your screen recording, but with one drawback - It only allows for the one trigger for all feedback layers, whereas the built-in button somehow lets you add a different trigger to each of the master feedback layers.

So, I've modified the file by removing my custom button from the master slide feedback master and adding a custom button to each of the individual master feedback layers and used the triggers I need for each layer (ie on the try again layer I obviously don't want the trigger to "jump to next slide"). However, the big drawback here is that the trigger on the try again feedback master to "hide the layer" when the button is clicked, obviously doesn't work at the slide layer level. Additionally, because these triggers sit on the feedback master, they don't appear and therefore can't be altered on the slide layers like the built-in button ones can. So where this becomes an issue, apart from the try again layer, is when I need to change the trigger to "jump to the next scene" for the last question slide in a scene.

Where does that leave me with my customised buttons? It really means that it's actually less efficient to add these to the feedback master and use these in place of the built-in buttons because I can't replicate what the built-in button on the slide master of the feedback master does...

So, resorting to using customised buttons on the feedback master is not proving to be effective at all, and the issues relating to the built-in buttons as originally detailed still remain unresolved. Hence why I have taken the time to detail these issues in the hope that the formatting issues relating to the built-in button can be prioritised for troubleshooting.

I've attached my updated source file fyi.

Your attention to this is much appreciated Leslie.

This is a long standing problem.  I posted about it earlier in this thread as have others.  I barely use any master slide  or feedback master functionality now, except for choosing a background colour on the 'blank' master slide. Occasionally I might place some triggers to manage variables  on there if I have a course wide counter or status indicator happening.

I also create original button graphics outside of SL in a graphics program, 1x .png for each state, then  import and assemble them in to button states inside SL. Doing this so  SL doesn't corrupt the design I'm looking for by replacing one of my states with one of its hard coded variants. (Although it still manages to occasionally delete the "visited" state and replace it with something unwanted of its own making.  Therefore I tend to not use the 'visited' state in any interactions....visited can also become problematic when attempting to use together with 'selected' - another story...)

I then copy/paste these custom buttons onto every screen that needs them so they can receive the right triggers...the problem you have so well described Dianne.

All of this, unfortunately, means we miss out on having a powerful and reliable master page based workflow.

I totally agree with you Peter - I can't believe you go to such lengths to create buttons outside of Storyline - although I can see why you do, but I question why we should have to do this...

I am a big, big believer in using master slides, but with this issue unresolved, it makes me wonder where the future lies for Storyline...there is some pretty impressive competition out there now.

You get used to building the buttons, I make them in 'sketch' - normally I  use 4 or 5 states. so that's 4 or 5 png's per button.  Most courses I build require around 6 different buttons.  Guess its just part of my workflow now. I've become adept at making them.

It may sound as though I'm resolved to this and accepting of it, and to a degree I have become that way, having pulled all my hair out previously.  But I'm also an independant developer and this adds time and therefore cost to my work, so am very mindful of this overhead.

I'm hoping the Articulate crew will develop some momentum soon to fix longstanding problems like this.

Yep - 2 years seems an awfully long time to wait for a fix.

I'm also an independent developer trying to set up premium quality templates that those new to Storyline 360 can use to quickly and easily develop their e-Learning, but have found myself spending way too much time on workarounds for this - and then I've had to spend more time to document how users of my templates need to duplicate my question slides and can't just create their own using the normal "insert slide" method.

I'm afraid that if the feedback master slide is not working as it should, I'm not sure that the claim "stunningly simple, remarkably powerful software" is totally valid - sorry Articulate!

Thanks for sharing the additional course and details Dianne.

I'm updating our internal report of the issue and will share these inconsistencies you've shared here as well.

Hi

Same issue here.

States from Master:

States from Incorrect feedback layer:

I've attached the Storyline template for reference.

Thanks Ant. Examples are always helpful. I've included your template and you should now be subscribed to the thread so that you will be notified of any updates we have to share.

To echo the echo: Feedback masters are a mess. We have suffered so much frustration here (read wasted hours, and even days) with this I don’t know where to begin.

It would be better to not offer functionality at all that doesn’t work, rather than release something that requires a boat-load of work-arounds, limitations, and precautions.

I could more easily accept “Feedback layers can be modified only with changes to formatting of existing elements.” than to lose hours to discovering my work on feedback masters just takes me further down a rabbit hole of no return.

Leslie, has there been any update on this bug fix? We've had this issue with our Storyline template for years as well, it would be great to see a solution rolled out for it and to be able to use feedback masters without work-arounds and restyling buttons in our courses.

Hello Pam!

Thanks for reaching out to follow-up on this conversation.

What is the issue that you've been having with your Storyline template? Looks like the original issue was for Storyline 2 where the feedback master button states were not being inherited by the feedback layers. 

Is that what you are experiencing as well in Storyline 2?

If not, please let me know what you are seeing in your course and what version of Storyline you are using.

Hi
Is there any fix for this yet?

I am having similar issues in SL3. Custom button on Feedback Master appears a different colour when applied to slide....

Also using SL3 and the feedback masters continue costing us hours of frustration. They simply don't work.

Thanks John, at least I know it is not just my lack of skill!
I share your pain and after more than a year with no fix is most disappointing as it must affect everyone trying to create custom feedback slides.

It is not viable to manually edit every Feedback slide and every layer of feedback to try to change the default 'master' :-(

Is there an update on this issue? I'm having the same problem in SL 360 that Peter Moore had a year ago. Deleting the buttons from the feedback masters and trying to put them on the feedback layers in the slides does no good; the buttons just simply get removed altogether in my output.

Thanks,

Lisa

Hi Lisa,

The issue Pete shared we reported to our team where the custom feedback master/layers and buttons don't work as the built-in ones do. We'll keep you posted on this as we have more info to share. 

Any new informations around this topic? :( Still struggling with this.

Hi Vanessa,

I don't have anything new to share on this topic, but I'm happy to help you! Tell me more about what's going on in your file. If you can share a few sample slides with me, that would be even better!

You can share them publicly here, or send them to me privately by uploading it here. I'll delete the slides when I'm done troubleshooting.

Hi, I also have the same problem. I am just writing to let you know that there is +1 person who would like to see a fix for this and also to stay updated.