Trigger actions not executing in order expected
Oct 04, 2023
Hi everyone,
My understanding is that if I have one trigger and I want 2 things to happen as a result of that trigger, that the actions will execute in the order shown in the Trigger Panel. This understanding is based on information found in these 2 places:
https://articulate.com/support/article/Storyline-360-The-Order-in-Which-Triggers-Are-Executed
"If there are multiple triggers on the same object that are triggered by the same action (such as "on click"), the triggers execute in the same order in which they appear in the Triggers panel (top to bottom) in Storyline."
https://community.articulate.com/articles/storyline-360-working-with-triggers
"When there are multiple triggers on the same object that are triggered by the same action (e.g., when the learner clicks a button), triggers execute in the order they appear in the Triggers panel."
Below is a screenshot of my Trigger Panel and Timeline:
Based on the order of the actions listed, I thought when the learner clicks the Next button on the Player that FIRST the timeline would resume, showing a mouse movement after a pause in the timeline, and SECOND it would jump to the next slide because resuming the timeline was listed first and going to the next slide was listed second.
What is happening is that it just jumps immediately to the next slide and never resumed the timeline. Why is it not working as expected?
More info on what I'm trying to do: I'm creating a software simulation. It's very similar to this one: https://community.articulate.com/e-learning-examples/storyline-process-interaction-turned-software-simulation/. I want the learner to click on different areas to practice "using" the software I'm demonstrating. For example, I have a caption pointing to link and the caption tells them to click on that link. The link has a hotspot over it. The learner clicks on the hotspot and advances to the next slide. The challenge I'm having is the client wants there to be a "show me" type interaction within this simulation, in case the learner doesn't know what to do or just doesn't want to click where they need to click. They want to keep the player Next and Previous buttons. If the learner doesn't click the hotspot in order to advance, but rather clicks the Next button instead, they want a mouse movement showing what the learner was supposed to have done and then move on. So, I put a pause in the timeline at the end of the audio on the slide. At that point, the learner can do one of two things: click the hotspot and jump to the next slide OR the learner clicks Next, the timeline is resumed which shows the mouse movement of what they should have done, and moves to the next slide.
Bernadette
7 Replies
"Resuming" the timeline doesn't mean "finish playing" the timeline. It just means restart it.
The program will start the timelime when the object is clicked, but before there's time to see any of that, the program will immediately jump to the next.
If you don't want to jump to the next slide until the timeline ends, then use "when the timeline ends" for the trigger.
Thanks Judy for your reply! :)
I am a bit confused when you say "resuming" the timeline doesn't finish playing the timeline because I was able to do exactly that when I was trying out another possible solution.
See screenshot below of my set up. I hope it's big enough to see.
I paused the timeline at the 14.9 second mark. I created an object called "Show Me". The trigger for that object (highlighted in blue) says "when the user clicks Show Me, resume the timeline on this slide". And when I previewed it, that is exactly what it did. It finished playing the rest of the timeline on that slide. It did not restart the timeline. It picked up from 14.9 seconds, played the remaining second or two left on that slide.
Then, I had a second trigger for the slide that said to jump to the next slide when the timeline ends.
But the client wants to use the Next button on the player. So, what the client wants to have happen is at the pause, if the user clicks Next, the timeline would unpause and finish playing the timeline (as it did in the possible solution I posted above) and then at the end of the timeline it would go to the next slide.
I just don't understand why once I combine these two actions under one trigger, it won't execute in the order it displays in the Trigger Panel.
Both actions will execute at the same time regardless, the trigger order won't matter in this case. The timeline will resume in the background but you won't be able to see that as you already jumped to the next slide. It's about WHEN. When you click on the "Show Me" button, with no other conditions to check for to possibly delay execution of any of these two actions. If you tell me to jump now, I will not look around to check if there are any conditions for me before I jump, I don't care if someone else was told to jump at the same time, unless you tell me to jump after someone else jumped first. I apologize for such an ordinary explanation. Your solution above is perfect but as of now I don't see how this could be doable with the player next button. I'll stick around a bit to finding the possible solution.
First, I'll clarify. Yes, a trigger to resume the timeline will restart it from the point where it was paused. And it will continue playing until the end — unless it is interrupted. In your case, the "jump to next slide" trigger was interrupting it, because that trigger runs immediately after the "resume" trigger. The program can't keep playing the slide if it's already left the slide.
As for how your client wants to use the Next button. Personally, I don't think it's a good idea to use the Next button for actions other than jumping to the next slide. Next should go Next. That's how the standard user interface works.
That said, here's how to get the slide to work like you want it to:
Ah!!! The light bulb went off thanks to both responses from Nedim and Judy.
My expectation was that the first action (which takes a couple seconds) would finish and once that action finishes then the second action would execute after that. But, both are happening at the same time. Light Bulb moment! :)
Judy - I had already thought of your suggestion (in your second response) and had tried it out. Thank you for that. I probably should have mentioned that as well. It does works, but there is a negative user experience in my particular scenario. If the user clicks Next early on the slide (I have an audio clip playing and some captions appearing and disappearing.) what happens is the trigger is doing exactly what it's supposed to do...resume the timeline. So, from the user perspective, the Next button isn't doing what they would expect, but it's doing what the trigger is telling it to do.
Judy - I agree with you about not using the Player's Next button for this. I think I'll try to convince them to not use it.
Ultimately, what the client wants is to combine a "Try Me" and a "Show Me" into one simulation.
I created a "Try Me" only version where I had captions telling the user what to click on in addition to highlighting what the learner is supposed to click on in yellow.
They client thought there still might be a chance the user won't understand what do to, which is why they wanted to include a mouse movement as a way of showing the user what they should have done and then automatically move on to the next step.
I've typically seen Try Me and Show Me as separate simulations and the learner chooses one or the other, but I haven't found one that combines both into one.
Thanks everyone! This was driving me crazy! :)
Just keep in mind that Jump to slide next slide When the timeline ends on this slide trigger may cause an issue when you return to this slide if the Storyline decide to Resume saved state. Make sure this slide is set to Reset to initial state when revisiting so the timeline is set to play from the beginning.
Noted Nedim. :) Thank you for that added tip. I'll make sure to include that!