Storyline 360 : scene (section) name variable ??

Jun 20, 2019

Is there a built-in variable for the Scene name?

I only see 2 text variables for slide name only.

Client wants the scene (section) name to appear on every slide.

I hope I don't have to to copy and paste it into every slide.

 

 

18 Replies
Tom Kuhlmann

If there was a variable, wouldn't you have to paste the reference on every slide?

You could use a text variable and then a trigger to change the name of the variable based on the scene. Place that trigger in the slide master and then apply the same layout to the slides in a given scene. Thus it would change the title based on the scene

Robert Stewart

No, Storyline 360 has additional variables that use can put text placeholders that display slide number, slide name, etc. - No need to cut and paste or use triggers as they work on the Master slide too. However, they forgot to add a Scene Name placeholder.  Seems like every competition have had these features for the last 10 years.

Kevin Backs

I have a text variable called ChapterName. In the master slide, I have a text box that contains [%ChapterName% (Page %MenuSection.SlideNumber% of %MenuSection.TotalSlides%].

It works fine, as long as I make sure that I include a trigger to set %ChapterName% on every possible entry point to every scene (basically, that means setting a trigger on every slide). This not too bad because I can duplicate slides as I'm setting up a scene. BUT... and this just happened to me today... I have been asked to rename one of the scenes. Granted, it's only 50 slides (and I get paid by the hour) but it's still pretty tedious.

It would be VERY handy, since you already offer %Menu.SlideTitle% and %Menu.SectionNumber%, if the scene title was also made available -- something like %Menu.SectionTitle%.

 

Kevin Backs

Hi Lauren,

I have submitted it as a feature request.

I have to say, the way that the page numbers are exposed is brilliant! That actually makes it a bit frustrating that the scene names are not exposed.

Kevin Backs

Instructional Program Designer, Human Resources
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada / Government of Canada
Kevin.Backs@cic.gc.ca / Tel: 873-408-0200

Concepteur de programmes de formation, Ressources humaines
Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada / Gouvernement du Canada
Kevin.Backs@cic.gc.ca / Tél.: 873-408-0200

Kristoffer Høgberg

Any news on this Lauren? Just like Kevin I have a loooot of slides I need to change (but I don´t get payed by the hour). On a sidenote, you should implement a voting system on proposed functionality on the roadmap site, I´m guessing there are alot of people who experience the same issues as a lot of the posters in the forum threads and not speaking up, it could increase the retention rate if you made a customer centric change like this. 

Ren Gomez

Hi Kristoffer,

No updates yet, but we'll be sure to jump into this discussion as soon as there's any news to share.

I also appreciate the feedback on a voting system! We're focused on getting customer feedback and feature requests the best way possible, so I'd be happy to bring this up internally with our team for further discussion, thanks!

Jason McKenna

Hi guys!

I figured out how to display the Scene Name while braining out an automated, Master-Slide-located, breadcrumb bar for my own test module UI in Storyline 360. The only caveat to my automated breadcrumb is that I decided to use a custom variable for directly assigning the module/lesson title - and that's because if the Player doesn't have "Title" enabled, then the HTML source doesn't generate it at all. I did find the title dynamically as well, using a similar method as below (so it was automated originally), but I didn't want "Title" enabled in the Player. No biggie. One variable gets manually set and yer good.

For whatever reason, I couldn't get the Javascript to "get" the built-in Project.SceneNumber variable's value. It just wouldn't work (kept coming back as 'null'). So, I made a custom variable (called 'SceneNumber') in Storyline to hold the updated Project.SceneNumber value (using a trigger on timeline start of the Master Slide). Apparently you need to use custom vars within your Storyline JS code. Then, I could use that variable's numeric value in my JS code to locate and grab the correct scene title from within the source HTML.

Attached are two images for clarity and to show where/how I set this up. It's pretty simple actually, and the code is extremely minimal. Hopefully this works for anyone still trying to just grab the Scene Name for whatever use case. Here's the JS code to copy and use. This solution is for Storyline 360 HTML output. It should continue to work unless Articulate changes the class name "is-scene" in future versions, but I don't see why they'd ever mess with that. This solution also still works if "Menu" is disabled in the Player options.



//SETTING THE CURRENT SCENE NAME IN BREADCRUMB
//author: Jason McKenna @ Jason McKenna Design

var player = GetPlayer();

//Decrease retrieved SceneNumber value by 1 (JS starts counting at 0)
var scene_number = player.GetVar("SceneNumber");
var parse_value = scene_number - 1;

//Retrieve current scene title by parsing the source HTML (DOM)
var retrieved_scene_title = document.getElementsByClassName("is-scene")[parse_value].getAttribute("title");

//Assign retrieved scene title to variable displayed in the breadcrumb
player.SetVar("SceneTitle", retrieved_scene_title);