Exporting Variables into a Google Spreadsheet

Meant to say, the data lines of the code corresponds to what you want put into your spreadsheet so adapt as necessary.

Thanks Kate for sharing your steps here - I know it's a common question so it's always great to be able to point users to another example. :-)

Hi Kate..this is so awesome. Once it is in place, though, how will it be used? What are you doing with the Google Sheet containing these data?

Hi Bonnie, in my course I ask my learners to rate their understanding against 4 statements before and after the course. The ratings are variables that get exported to a google spreadsheet so I can analyse the data and how learners feel they have developed over the course. Hope that makes sense!

Thanks! I was very pleased when I got it to work because it is going to be very useful. 

Heya Kate - 

I've used the method you show here as well and it works pretty well to setup a Google Spreadsheet as an endpoint. This method is handy for capturing inline survey results, to grab choices for choice analysis, and for double capturing completions if your LMS happens to be temperamental.  One of the cool things about the Google Spreadsheet is the notification / subscription feature. Subscribing to updates on a per-addition or digest basis is great for infrequent submissions. It's also handy to use formulas and linked sheets to create public dashboards. The original data can be locked away while the linked data (filtered and sanitized) can be exposed in a published location.

Here's an alternate method that uses a Google Form as the intermediary to submit the fields from Storyline. A little less setup using a form to process the submissions and I've had fewer issues with permissions (if your Google Apps instance is corporate or government, using GAPPS script is potentially problematic).

Add this to a trigger when the slide loads. This will write the JQuery library to your header so you won't need to do any post-publish surgery. This will load Jquery for both the HTML and HTML5 versions. This can also be used for other libraries. I've successfully used this method to load up the soundmanager.js library for persistent background music.

function add_script(scriptURL,oID) {
var scriptEl = document.createElement("script");
var head=document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
scriptEl.type = "text/javascript";
scriptEl.src = scriptURL;
scriptEl.id=oID;
head.appendChild(scriptEl);}

//only want to add these once!

if(document.getElementById('jquery')==null){
add_script("https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.10.1/jquery.min.js","jquery");
}

After you've built your form and viewed the live form, inspect the form elements or explore the source to find the field references for your form. These will be something like entry.156531987. Write these down or copy them into another reference document. While you're at it, grab the form ID from the URL.

var player=GetPlayer();
var vRate=player.GetVar("slider1");
var vSuggestion=player.GetVar("TextEntry");

var fTarget="https://docs.google.com/a/nara.gov/forms/d/YOURFORMID/formResponse";

function submit_form(){$.ajax({
url: fTarget,
type: "POST",
data: {"entry.156531987" :vRate,"entry.1547132205":vSuggestion},
success: function(data) {
//won't return anything since it's cross domain
}
});

return false;

}

setTimeout(submit_form(), 2000);

Edit: Left off a little bit. I delay the submission of data for a couple of seconds for some reason. Must have fixed an issue in testing. Probably will work find without the delay.

Thanks for that - I get asked for this all the time. Kate I loved your step by step instructions. Steve I loved your idea of using a javascript trigger instead of having to put something in the published folder and being able to put variables into a google form would be awesome - but I think I would need a few more step by step instructions to be able to make it work.  Do you think you could explain how to do it, for say, the variable scorepercent and a variable for name?  I do get asked for this all the time.

Thanks, Kate, for sharing this solution. If anyone wants to see an example in action, I've posted it here: 

http://erichrenken.com/SaveResultsToGoogleSpreadsheet/story.html

Thank's Steve - I will try your javascript to automatically add the jquery line into my files.

Great example, thanks Erich!

Jacinta - you need to set up a spreadsheet where the columns are 'scorepercent' and 'name', follw the instructions above to add code to the google spreadsheet, then in the javascript you add to the articulate trigger you would put (just make sure the column titles and the variables are spelt exactly the same and in the same case):

var player = GetPlayer();

$.ajax({

url:
"Current web app URL",

type: "POST",

data: {"name": player.GetVar("name")
, "scorepercent": player.GetVar("scorepercent")},

success: function(data)

{

alert(data);

},

error: function(err) {
console.log(err);
}

});

return false;

Hope that helps!

Has anyone done this with Chrome lately? The method works beautifully in Firefox, but if you try it in Chrome, it blocks the javascript elements loading on the page by default (you'll get an alert in the browser bar, with the option to load the scripts. Without doing this, none of the scripts will run).

Any way to get around this? It'd be nice and easy if we could limit everyone to one browser, but that won't happen.