How to create an automatic progress bar in Articulate Storyline

Mar 28, 2019

I've created a video on how you can create an automatic progress bar in Articulate Storyline. 

I placed the progress bar is on the master slide. The progress bar calculates which state to show based on the total amount of pages in your course and the current page.

So you can add and remove pages to your course without adjusting the progressbar on each slide in your course.

The way i build the progress bar in Articulate Storyline is first published by Pete Brown in a blog post on https://cooeeproductions.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/showing-the-learner-a-course-progress-meter-in-storyline/ in 2013

36 Replies
Iain Corbett

Hi Mark - thank you for the video.  I've followed it religiously, but I just could't get it to work!  For some reason the visited pages were not being counted.  Finally I figured out that the initial state of the radio button was set to "selected".  I changed it to "normal" and then it all worked as expected.  

Marge Rutter

Quick question... because this is on the master slide, is there any way to make sure it will sit on top of any content on the individual slides. For example, I am using screenshots on each slide that fill the entire slide. So master slide content is hidden by those screenshots and does not show through. I feel like I need a "Bring to Front" command that will bring master slide content to the front of individual slide content. Does that exist?

Nicely done, by the way. 

Mark Spermon

Hi Marge what you could do is create the progressbar on a layer on the master slide. Masterslide layers will cover your slide content.

Something to watch out for is that as you use layers in your course on normal slides and the option hide other layers is selected also the layers on the master slide wil be hidden.

Freddy Mogollon

Thank you for your replay Mark. I did trials with the radio button before having the issue to see what happened and thats correct, if it is checked out, the process won't work. That was not my issue. After watching your video again I realized I had not changed the status of the slides, all of them were set up to "recovering the original state when revisiting". I changed that and it worked perfect! I have another question, I decided to include the % indicator in the meddle of the progress bar so the student can see that additional to the color progress, is there a way to make it shows consistently in terms of digit numbers? Sometimes it show ##.##%, others ##.#% (because the decimal is just one) and other times it shows ##% only (because the decimal is 0), I would like it to show ##.#% anytime even if the decimal is 0. Any clue?

Sarita Bhardwaj

Hi Mark, 

Thank you for sharing the wonderful guidance to create the course progress bar. The progress bar works exactly how I expected but there is one issue. Due to 'Resume saved state' on all the slides, suspend data limit is crossed and when the learner resumes this course on LMS it takes them to some previous slide and does not start from where the learner left it. Is there a way to resolve this?

I know publishing the course in SCORM 2004 might resolve it but I am really interested to know what is the fix if I just have SCORM 1.2.

Anthea Proudfoot

Hi Mark;

I've followed your instructions but I'm having some issues with my progress bar. I've tried about 3 or 4 different instructions to get a progress bar and yours has the least amount of issues. My issues are:

1. When the learner returns to the menu the visible progress bar doesn't move even though the count and percentage has increased.

2. There are 13 slides so I've set the default value to 13, yet when I get to having 5 slides (38%) left it's showing that we're 85% done. Not sure where it's getting the additional count from as it seemed to be doing OK until that point.

3. I have 2 question slides in the course where the learner can attempt it twice (more if they come back to it from the menu) which means I've had to set it to "Return to initial state" so the activities work properly on the retry. Is there a way I can set it so the progress doesn't increase again when they retry those questions while having everything returns to the start so they can try again?

I've attached my course and I'm hoping you can help me figure out where I'm going wrong. I'd really appreciate any help at all!

Anthea

Freddy Mogollon

Hi Liz, here my check list for you:

* Make sure you change the number of slides in the "Manage Project Variable">"Default Value" to the quantity of slides your presentation contains
* You have to be aware that depending on the quantity of stages you created in the "States" feature for the presentation (the ones that will be shown in the progress bar) there will be some slides that won't show any progress since the % at that specific time has not reached the value to change the progress. If you want to see more frequent progress you need to include more stages.
* Make sure you have applied the correct layout to all the slides so all of them shown the progress bar
* It will help to add a % counter into the progress bar using the "%ScreensVisitedPercentage%%" in a text box inside the progress bar

Hope this help

Freddy

Freddy Mogollon

Gotcha! I had that issue too. It is because the progress bar is in the master slide, then it will appear in each slide as it is shown in the rest of the slides. The ones that do not show the progress bar is because the video, that is over the entire slide, cover the progress bar and there is no way to bring to front the progress bar since it is in the master slide. The solution I found was inserting the video in a smaller frame so the progress bar can be shown. Another tip, you can include the % valu into the bar instead of having it in another place, just paste the text nox over the bar adjusting the colors so the value can be seen even when the bar is covering it…

Freddy Mogollon

I noticed that now. I would think that some of your videos are “created” in an Articulate compatible platform?, but what I am sure is that if you insert a video from your files and it covers the complete slide, the slidemaster wont be shown as it is happening with the video in the slide C100. Try it, just reduce that video frame and you will see the progress bar.

Liz Watkins

First, my team would freak out if I resized the video and I tried it with the same results. Plus it is happen other screens with out video or layers.  It is just strange. Will have to chew on it for a while. There are no differences between those slides and the others. 

Thanks for your help Freddy, you have renewed my faith is the Forum.

Freddy Mogollon

I understand Liz, could you confirm this?:

* Make sure you have applied the correct layout to all the slides so all of them shown the progress bar

Maybe you have other slides master that does not include the bar and are applied to the slides that does not show it, could you double check?

Admin OOV online

Hi, this setup works great. Thank you Mark!

I do have a small problem now. Because I have quizes in the course (who doesnt..) and those quizes need a reset when learners try the quiz again, the counter gets messed up.

For resetting the quiz I use the 'reset to initial state' function within slide properties.  The setup uses the 'resume saved stated'....

So what adjustment could work?

Can quizes be reset to their initial state without settings in the slide properties?

Can states (radio button) be permanent?

Thnx.