How To: Hyperlink to Additional Content from Within Your Course

Hello all! This is my first informative post on the Articulate forums, and while I assume I'm not reinventing the wheel, I struggled to find this information for myself so I thought it'd be helpful to others to post a step-by-step set of instructions on how to use hyperlinks to provide your end-user with the ability to view supplemental course content in a new window. I have tested this on a SCORM 1.2 LMS and verified it works well!

Background:

I am building a course that will only be viewed from the "Slide Only" view mode, and all Articulate Navigation has been elimited with the exception of the "Pause/Play" and the "Notes" buttons. I have created my own navigation buttons for next/previous/replay by using hyperlinks, but I came to an impass while attempting to implement more elaborate navigation and functionality to the course.

My intial goal was for the user to be able to click on a hyperlink from multiple (every) slides within a Presenter presentation, which would direct them to a specific location/file/interaction/additional presentation/etc., and then have the ability to return to the location from which the hyperlink was clicked. In essence, I was seeking the function of the Player Tabs, available through the No Sidebar and Standard view modes, but via a hyperlink. Without any restrictions on view modes, I suppose I could just use the Player Tabs, however I am required to create this course by only using the "Slide Only" view.

The following were the questions which lead to my eventual discovery:

• Is it possible to hyperlink to the contents of individual player tabs? E.G. Create a "Glossary" button on the slide that hyperlinks to a Glossary Engage Interaction that has been published as a Player Tab?
• If I cannot hyperlink directly to Player Tabs, is there any other way to access them in the "Slide Only" view mode?
• Is there another way to hyperlink to an Engage Interaction, or an additional Published Presenter file? If so, is it possible to navigate to that file from anywhere in the main presentation, and return to the same location? E.G. PowerPoint has a function to link to the "Last Slide Viewed."

Well, after some time browsing the web, finding ambiguous information and a lack of instructions, I decided to go ahead and tinker with some files on my computer. In the end, I was able to answer my own question! The following is what I discovered (The attached document is the same set of instructions, but also includes pictures):

 

 

 

 

 

HOW TO LINK TO SUPPLEMENTAL CONTENT EMBEDDED IN ARTICULATE PRESENTER

Want to know how to open up additional content from within your Articulate Presenter presentation without having the user lose their place in the course? For example, you can make a button that shows up on every screen that, when clicked, opens a new window with a glossary, a flip book with service information, or even a training exercise! The following step-by-step instructions will describe how to do just that!

 

STEP 1:

·         Create your main Articulate Presenter Course.

o   Plan ahead for your supplemental content – create/insert “buttons” for this content on the slides of your main presentation, wherever you want the content to be accessed from.

o   Don’t insert any hyperlinks just yet; we have some steps to do first.

STEP 2:

·         Publish to LMS your main Articulate Presenter file.

STEP 3:

·         Create your supplemental content in Articulate Presenter

o   This can be a single slide with an Engage Interaction (E.G. a Glossary), or even an entire course!

STEP 4:

·         Publish to CD your supplemental Articulate Presenter file.

STEP 5:

·         Open the folder containing your published supplemental content.

STEP 6:

·         Right click on the “player”.html file and rename it to “player[name-of-content]” without the quotations

STEP 7:

·         Right click on the “loader” file and open with Notepad.

STEP 8:

·         Select the text “player” and replace it with the new name you assigned to the player.html file in STEP 6.

STEP 9:

·         Save the loader file and close the window.

STEP 10:

·         Re-open your Main Course PowerPoint file.

STEP 11:

·         Right click on the button(s) you wish to use to link to your supplemental content and click on “Hyperlink”.

STEP 12:

·         Click “Browsed Pages” and then type “data/[player-name-of-your-supplemental-content].html” (without the quotations) into the Address: bar.

STEP 13:

·         Click OK. Repeat Steps 11, 12, and 13 for each button in the Main Course PowerPoint file that you wish to link to your supplemental content.

STEP 14:

·         After inserting all of your hyperlinks, re-publish the Main Course for LMS.

STEP 15:

·         Open the published Main Course folder and then open the “data” folder.

STEP 16:

·         Copy all of the files from your published Supplemental Content folder.

STEP 17:

·         Paste the copied contents of your Supplemental Conent into the “data” folder of your Main Course.

STEP 18:

·         Review your published course and check for proper function of the links!

 

Voila! You now have the ability to open supplemental content into a new window by clicking on hyperlinks embedded into your main course! If you wish to get more creative and add more than one piece of additional content, it would be wise to insert the containing folder for that content into the data folder of your main course. All you'd have to do is change your hyperlink to address the addtion of that folder to something along the lines of "data/glossary/playerglossary.html" (without the quotations).

 

NOTE:

Always remember to verify your hyperlinks are correctly input prior to publishing the final version of a course. PowerPoint occasionally alters the “/” in hyperlinks when publishing via Articulate. After publishing, verify proper operation of the links on both your own computer, and on the LMS, prior to launching the course.

I hope this will be useful to other aspiring course developers!

-Chris