NEXT button does not advance to from last slide in one scene to first slide in next scene

Mar 14, 2018

Lisa Spirko
By Lisa Spirko

Hi all (particularly staff),

Storyline has issues when it comes to the Next button on the last slide in a non-branching scene. (Perhaps this has already been communicated, but the only posts I can find on this subject were posted years ago; I can't believe Articulate hasn't already fixed this.)

With a course consisting of multiple scenes in linear sequence (with no branching), clicking Next on the last slide in one scene should advance to the first slide in the next scene, but it doesn't.

In the attached test Storyline file, I have three scenes with a single slide in each one (for simplicity). The first two are set up to advance to the next slide automatically, and the Next button is also set up to advance to the next slide if the learner clicks it before the timeline ends. One would expect both triggers to advance to the next slide (the first slide in the next scene) in the same manner, but this is not the case. If you allow the timeline to end, the slide advances automatically to the first slide in the next scene just fine. But if you click Next, it doesn't. Aside from the method of advancing, there is and should be no difference.

While there is a workaround, in that you can program the click Next trigger to advance to the first slide in the next scene by name, this can cause problems if you insert slides between the two (e.g. a transition slide where you didn't have one before). If the course is linear and Storyline is already smart enough to know to advance automatically to the next slide in sequence, it should be smart enough to do that if you click Next, too. We shouldn't have to create and maintain specific slide-by-name references when all we want is for it to advance to the next slide, period.

I'm hoping that this issue (a bug, really) is already on the staff's radar, and if it's not yet, I'm hoping it will be soon.

Thanks,

Lisa

8 Replies
Jeff Forrer
6 years ago03/14/18 at 7:45 pm (UTC)

I know you looking for staff input but I was curious and took a look.  Assuming this is SL360 because when I tried to open with SL3 it said was not the right version.

When I tested it in 360, neither Next or ending of timeline advanced the screen to another, which is what I would expect.  Interesting it advance at end of timeline for you. 

I am not sure how SL is supposed to know what scene and first slide of that scene to target unless you tell it explicitly (especially if you have many scenes)  We never use the go to "next slide' or "previous slide" choices, we always set the slide we want it to go to specifically to avoid error.  When working with multiple scenes and slides, adding and subtracting slides to the mix, it makes for much easier maintenance for us, especially for branching courses.  But that is what works for us.

Lisa Spirko
6 years ago03/15/18 at 5:29 pm (UTC)

Yes, this is a SL360 file, which probably explains why the auto-advance is not working for you. I think it should be pretty clear to SL how to advance to the next scene/first slide in a linear course. I'm not sure why it's not showing as linear in Story View for this little test course, since I have all of the triggers and slide properties set up the same as my real courses, but in my real courses, the scenes are laid out one above the other, and I can clearly see in Story View that the first slide in each scene is, indeed, the first slide, and that one scene proceeds to the next, and we have to tell the Next button to the first slide in the next scene that, by all appearances, it should already "know" is the logical next slide in sequence.

Specifying the exact slide we want to go to (or just jumping to the next scene) is what we already do, but it is fraught with potential error. For one, it requires us to take the extra step to go to the last slide in each scene and program the Next button for that action. As I said in my original post, if we have to insert a slide after that last slide or before the first slide in the next scene, the Next button has to be reprogrammed in two places--one to remove that special programming on what used to be the last slide, and then put the special programming on the new last slide. (Of course, if there's branching, that's a different issue, but I'm talking here about linear courses only, as I said in my original post.)

I guess we just have different ways of doing things on my team that you do on yours. Thanks for your input. I'd still love it if a staff person would chime in on this apparent flaw in SL.

Lisa Spirko
6 years ago03/15/18 at 8:02 pm (UTC)

Thank you for the demo, Alyssa. Yes, we have unused scenes as well (e.g. for lightbox slides), but we just keep them at the end. I'm seeing now why the scenes in my test course weren't stacked one above the other; I had to connect the scenes together. (I'm brand new to SL in the past month, and I've been working in courses that others have created).

However, I'm still seeing an issue that is the crux of our pain, despite the fact that we've linked scenes as you described. In your demo, it looks like you are linking from one scene to the next scene, which would be great and exactly what I'm saying Storyline should allow us to do (if we're designing linear courses), but in reality, this does not link those two scenes together in linear fashion. What you're doing is creating a trigger on the *last slide* in that scene. This is an absolute link, not a relative link. The trigger is not at the scene-level, so if someone does this linking early in course development, and then adds more slides after that last slide, that trigger remains on what used to be the last slide and it becomes a potential maintenance headache to fix the triggers on all of those slides. I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons you'll give for why it was designed this way, but if I'm in Story View and I'm clicking that Link icon on the *scene* and linking from what appears to be an entire scene to another entire scene, I still assert that SL should be smart enough to make this a relative link, meaning that, at the end of course development, whatever the last slide ends up being in that "link from" scene becomes the jumping off place to the next scene.

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