Change State Of

Sep 18, 2012

I cannot figure it out what I do wrong

I have a main menu. When the student follows a chapter, the chapter must change to State Visited. At the end of a chapter a variable changes from False to True.

In the main menu I have the foolowing trigger

At the end of Chapter Inleiding the variable InleidingAfgerond gets the value true.

What I get: When I click in the main menu on Inleiding, it directly changes to state Visited.

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!

14 Replies
Candace Winslow

Yeah!   Just to clarify for anyone else.  Slide 1 (Phil's menu slide) has the "change state" trigger. Slide 2 (or whatever slide along the timeline) has the Variable change trigger to equal True upon Next button click (or upon page view). Once the learner returns to Slide 1, the object has listened to the variable change.

Hope I didn't make that more complicated. Sometimes helps to hear instructions in a different way. 

Liz Guilfoyle

I'm having a similar issue that I cannot seem to fix, any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

  1. I have multiple scenes.
  2. Scene 1 has a software screen capture, where users can hover areas for detail.
  3. Scene 2 has a screener that allows the user to step thru a certain process utilizing the software

Within Scene1 a user may click on an area to display Scene 2 in a lightbox.  I will have several of these opportunities, where a user can click to walk-thru a software simulation within a lightbox.

On Scene 1 I added a check box that I hope will be selected after the user returns to this screen after they close the lightbox.  I am only requiring that the timeline start on Scene 2.

I have set up the following:

Scene 1 Check box: Change state of ckbox to selected when the timeline starts.  Condition, if the Scene2 variable is True.

Created a variable setting the default value to False.

Scene 2, slide 1 - I have a trigger that sets variable to True when timeline starts.

I created this by modeling 'TrackLearnerPrgress' template from the site.  I have also made sure the triggers are at the top based on input from other forums.  Really cannot determine what I am doing wrong.  Your assistance would be most welcome!

Liz Guilfoyle

I did not have that, however, I'm get the same results with that modification applied.

I noticed today that I am able to get the button to display as 'selected' only when I actually navigate away/return to the that slide again.

What I mean is, after the screener plays, I close and the original slide ( the one with the button) displays.  The button is not showing 'selected'.  However, if I navigate to a different slide and then return to this slide, then I observe a slight pause and then the button becomes checked.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Liz, 

I forgot to mention if you'd prefer to not post in the forums, you can always send it privately to our team here, which is just accessible by our staff. 

Since you mentioned the button only changes on the second visit, have you checked to see if that is true regardless of the order in which you visit the slides in Scene 2? If it only happens when you go in a particular order, it sounds as if there is not a trigger associated with the state change based on the first click or enough time for the built in state to recognize the change before the timeline ends (not sure which set up you have). 

Also, just a reminder of some other guidelines that if not followed could cause odd Storyline behavior: 

  • Work on your local drive (your C: drive).Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, includingfile corruption, loss of audio, and other unexpected behavior. 
  • You should also make sure the directory pathto your project files and your published output is less than 260 characters(for example C:\Articulate).
  • Avoid using special characters, accents orsymbols in your file names.
Liz Guilfoyle

I'm sorry but the company for which I am creating the content says the file cannot be shared outside of the company.

As for the order of the slides in scene 2...the slides are from a screener, simulating software usage.  It is only thru following the prompts provided within the sim that I am progressing thru the slides... so I am progressing in the same order each trial.

My opinion is the lightbox is the culprit.

I think scene 1 is not refreshing upon the closing of Scene 2 (from the lightbox ).  I think the way the lightbox (modal window) is opened/closed that the system doesn't know that the variable has changed.  That info is only getting passed to the trigger after I revisit the page.

I am assuming this because, when I change the trigger in Scene 1 to a 'jump to slide', and provide a button to return back to Scene 1, it works.  However, I modify it back to lightbox and it doesn't work. 

Your thoughts?

Also, love the reminders you provided.  I'm good on all of those as well.

Liz Guilfoyle

Since I cannot provide the file I'm actually working on I modified the template file I downloaded from the site.

I changed the 'exercise button' to lightbox the linked slide.  You will be able to see that the other buttons work if you jump to a slide, however, from the lightbox, it does not.  This is what I am experiencing.

I hope this helps for you to see the file.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Liz,

Thanks for sharing the file, and I did some testing of it, and you're right it seems to be connected the the lightbox element. If I jumped to the Table of Contents slide while still in the lightbox, I saw that the state changed for the "Exercise" and if I closed the lightbox the state change held true on the Table of contents slide as well. If I set up the triggers to close the lightbox based on the user clicking the submit button - the state change didn't hold true. I'm going to try testing again tomorrow with fresh eyes.

Liz Guilfoyle

Lesson's Learned and the resolve.

How we Tested:

When you simply trigger a lightbox from a user click, the provided navigation does not update the "visited" ck box.

If add a close button to the lightbox slide to jump to the initiating slide, that slide now displays in a lightbox and is not "visited"

If add a close button to the lightbox slide that closes the lightbox with an additional trigger to jump to the slide it navigates as desired but the ck box is not updated to "visited".

So the workaraound:

Create another scene, with a blank slide.

Add a trigger to this blank slide that lightbox's the desired Scene2

Add a custom close button to the Scene 2 slides with 2 triggers.  (1) closes the lightbox  (2)jumps to the original scene

Now, it works.  Scene 1's check box is "visited" upon return from Scene2.  Scene 2 displays in the lightbox as desired.

(P.S.  I would have never thought that an additional trigger could be added after a trigger to close was created.)

Addressing this programmatically should be a very easy fix for the developers.  Upon closing a lightbox, the variables need to be refreshed.  It appears the cache is not refreshed when lightboxes are closed regardless of provided navigation or custom close buttons.

Special thanks to a colleague, Kara Jones that figured it out!! 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Liz,

Thanks for sharing the workaround you found, and my apologies for not getting back to this on Friday. It seems that some of the issues you've encountered were a known issue to our team and that they're looking into it, such as:

You may find that a "Close lightbox" trigger doesn't work as expected when it's preceded by a "Jump to scene" trigger. This is a known issue. See this article for more information and a solution:

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