Trigger when Timeline Starts

Oct 02, 2014

I'm trying to make a slide where rectangles indicate if the learner has visited a section, and which section they are currently on. It's not working, though. I have true/false variables for ever section, set as false to start with. When the user clicks into a new section, it changes the variable to true. 

As the learner clicks through sections, there are rectangles that have a "normal" state and a "visited" state. When the learner is on a section, that section's rectangle is normal, and any visited section's rectangle is red. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. My triggers to change the states of the rectangles are based on when the timeline of each layer starts, but the triggers aren't working.

I made another course that has a similar interaction, but it shows the section that you are on as complete rather than as a different state. That shouldn't cause it to not work in this course though, right?

Any ideas as to why this may be happening?

6 Replies
Mike Enders

Hi Kelly,

Are you building this particular interaction entirely on one slide by using layers?

If so, you don't need variables. If your button has a visited state, it will automatically change to visited once the learner clicks on it and travels to the slide layer.  Of course, I may not be understanding the approach you're after (not an unlikely scenario!).  

The reason those layer triggers (change state when timeline starts) aren't working is because you aren't leaving the slide and returning (layers are on the same slide).  The triggers you have are predicated upon jumping away from the slide and then returning (and hence, restarting the slide timeline).  

At least that's what I can see from this image.

Mike

Kevin Thorn

Agree with Mike. If this design resides all on one slide, you probably don't need variables. As Mike said, Storyline automatically recognizes an object's "visited" state simply by user clicking. The trigger would be to change the state of one object by evaluating the visited state of another.

Also, couldn't you set the Layer properties to "Allow Seeking = Yes" and "Pause the Base Slide timeline"?

That way, each layer's timeline would be independent of the each other's timeline as well as the base slide's timeline.

Kelly Schultze

The problem is that I want the learner to be able to navigate freely through the tabs, so I'm not sure if just clicking would work since all of the layers have their own sets of rectangles and hot spots.

The trigger works on the other project I made, which utilizes the same "timeline start" (the layers' timelines, not the base layer).

Mike Enders

Kelly,

Is there something on the layers that the learner does that indicates that they have completed the content on that layer?  If so, you could trigger the state change based upon that event.

If you could share a little bit more about what the learner is doing once they go to the layer and how they end up returnig to the base layer, that might help us narrow this down a bit.

Mike

Kelly Schultze

Each layer shows the learner a different section of a user profile and will have captions on the layers to explain in detail. Since it's only reading information, there's nothing other than clicking the hot spots to jump to a new section that the learner can do to trigger the state change. 

It's just really frustrating that the exact same set up works in one course, but won't work in another. I've tested the other course multiple times and it works fine, and the triggers are identical, both using the "when timeline starts" for each layer timeline.

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