Progress bar disables audio on layers

Mar 02, 2016

Hi, I'm trying to apply a progress bar I've adapted from someone else to an existing course. I've tried importing the bar & its triggers into a new project and then importing the developed slides into the same project. I've also tried overlaying the progress bar over the existing course and come up with the same issue.

The issue is that the progress bar disables the audio on the layers within the project. I realize that the module bar will probably work fine on new projects as part of the template, but that isn't possible in this case. The layers work/play as programmed in the original file. I'm attaching the affected scene in a separate file. Please note, we're not using the left menu player option because we need the full screen real estate. 

Any suggestions/insights would be welcome!

8 Replies
Brian Allen

Hello Deb,

You're probably running into issues with the progress bar disabling audio because of the layer properties.  For detailed info on how layer visibility works, see the "Visibility" section of this tutorial - https://community.articulate.com/series/4/articles/working-with-layers

Essentially, to fix this using the approach you're taking, you'll want to make sure that A) the Status Bar layer doesn't hide any of the other layers that need to open, B) the other layers don't hide the Status Bar layer, and C) that you're adding the triggers needed so that one layer DOES hide a previous layer when necessary, since this won't be happening by default anymore.

With that being said, I've seen the type of status bar you've adapted from someone else.  I am pretty sure that the easiest way to deploy it would be to add it to your project's slide master.  There are some tips & tricks to working with slide masters, but the biggest gain you'd receive is that utilizing the slide master approach for a course-wide progress meter keeps you from having to add a gazillion triggers to every slide in a 100 slide course.

Here's a quick primer on working with slide masters in Storyline, in case it's helpful - https://community.articulate.com/series/4/articles/using-slide-masters-in-articulate-storyline-2

Deb Elliott

Thanks to you both for your input on the slide layers, and I will definitely review the tutorials.

However, Brian, if you take a look at the slide master on the file I uploaded, you'll see that I indeed imported the progress bar's triggers etc. there.

While the progress bar shows up on the background slides of those built like PPT slides in the slide master, it does not display on the pages with screen pix because it's on the blank slide in back of the primary image. The slides that show images of the system we're training, do NOT display the progress bar.

Further thoughts on this issue?

Brian Allen
Deb Elliott

However, Brian, if you take a look at the slide master on the file I uploaded, you'll see that I indeed imported the progress bar's triggers etc. there.

Hi Deb, I think we may have a difference in wording here.  I did take a look at the project you shared but there are no triggers associated with the status bar in your slide masters.

Each slide has a "base layer", which is where I see all your triggers associated with the status bar.

Each storyline project, however, has slide masters, which can be used to make global changes to your storyline course in a one change affects all sort of way.  Slide masters are a great way to work more efficiently, especially for items on your slides that are global for your course, such as a progress meter.

If you view the tutorial on slide masters that I included in my first post you'll see what I'm referring to.

Deb Elliott

Sorry, Brian, my fault; I should have said, imported the triggers, etc. into the big file that this one is a subset of to protect the anonymity of my company. So, they were in there, but when I copied just that scene into a new project for this example, evidently the templated progress bar stuff wasn't copied with them. 

So, yes, I've attempted to import the progress bar programming into the slide master. And the progress bar didn't display on the screen recording/screen cap slides in the course, just the ones with the gray layout backgrounds like the first slide in my sample file. Thus, my second response. 

I apologize for the confusion. 

Deb

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