Having read this post on how to export variables to be read in a google spreadsheet, I set about trying to get this working in my project, I soon ran into problems, I just could not get it to work as google have changed some of the ways they work their drive documents. So, after a LOT of google searching and testing various methods, plus reading this article, I came up with the following method which is a combination of the two articles – and it works, hurrah! 1. Create a new google spreadsheet and change the sheet name (lower left hand corner) to DATA. Make sure your column names are the same as the variables you want to export (exactly matching case) 2. Find out your spreadsheet ‘key’ by looking in the address bar, the key is the long series of letters and numbers after /d/ and before /edit:Eg: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gF0QCNA1TZCNY3qr2zNpWKQ8r43D39o-nqz56c7cQUs/edit#gid=1283040575Key = 1gF0QCNA1TZCNY3qr2zNpWKQ8r43D39o-nqz56c7cQUs 3. Open the script editor (Tools ==> Script Editor) in your spreadsheet and paste the script from the attached file (I have copied and pasted this script and just kept in all the instructions) 4. There are two places in the script where it says “KEY” – copy and paste your key into these two places, between the “”. 5. Run the setUp script twice (Run menu). The first time it will ask for permission to run (grant it), then the second time you select to run it you won't get any popup indication it has run. 6. Go to Publish > Deploy as web app, enter Project Version name and click 'Save New Version', set security level and enable service (most likely execute as 'me' and access 'anyone, even anonymously). 7. Copy the 'Current web app URL' and paste in a notepad file to keep safe. 8. In Articulate, add a trigger to run javascript and use the following code, replacing “Current web app URL” with your URL you copied in the previous step (in””): var player = GetPlayer(); $.ajax({ url: "Current web app URL", type: "POST", data: {"Name": player.GetVar("Name") , "Rating1": player.GetVar("Rating1") , "Rating2": player.GetVar("Rating2") , "Rating3": player.GetVar("Rating3") , "Rating4": player.GetVar("Rating4") , "postRating1": player.GetVar("postRating1") , "postRating2": player.GetVar("postRating2") , "postRating3": player.GetVar("postRating3") , "Postrating4": player.GetVar("Postrating4")}, success: function(data) { console.log(data); }, error: function(err) { console.log('Error:', err); } }); return false; 9. Publish your articulate project – you need to host it somewhere like SCORM cloud or a LMS. When it has finished publishing click to open the files and edit the story.html and story_html5.html files – add the following line in under the line  or somewhere after <head>: <script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.0.min.js"></script> 10. Go back to articulate and click ‘zip’ – then publish your zip file and hopefully it will work! This isn’t for the faint hearted but it is so worth it if you can get it working! Good luck!

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.

The Google Form itself should be shared with everyone. However, there are a few things that can stop up the works. Watching the Javascript console is helpful in tracking down where things might be wrong. Here are a list of potential gotchas: The JQuery dependency isn't loaded before the ajax call. This means on the same slide on the base layer with your ajax call in another layer or in another slide that's sure to be hit. Loading everything at once, it'll likely fail as there's quite a bit that happens to force the load. There's another script error somewhere. Invalid script, a missing variable, an LMS call tested outside of an LMS. Lots of stuff can put a stop to script execution before you reach the ajax call. Using the wrong form address. In my example above, the link provided was for my organization. It includes the org address. If you use this same string, it'll fail unless your part of my org:)fTarget="https://docs.google.com/a/nara.gov/forms/d/YOURFORMID/formResponse";

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. :-)

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

KateRobertson

Community Member

12 years ago

Exporting Variables into a Google Spreadsheet

Having read this post on how to export variables to be read in a google spreadsheet, I set about trying to get this working in my project, I soon ran into problems, I just could not get it to work as google have changed some of the ways they work their drive documents.

So, after a LOT of google searching and testing various methods, plus reading this article, I came up with the following method which is a combination of the two articles – and it works, hurrah!

1. Create a new google spreadsheet and change the sheet name (lower left hand corner) to DATA. Make sure your column names are the same as the variables you want to export (exactly matching case)

2. Find out your spreadsheet ‘key’ by looking in the address bar, the key is the long series of letters and numbers after /d/ and before /edit:
Eg: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gF0QCNA1TZCNY3qr2zNpWKQ8r43D39o-nqz56c7cQUs/edit#gid=1283040575
Key = 1gF0QCNA1TZCNY3qr2zNpWKQ8r43D39o-nqz56c7cQUs

3. Open the script editor (Tools ==> Script Editor) in your spreadsheet and paste the script from the attached file (I have copied and pasted this script and just kept in all the instructions)

4. There are two places in the script where it says “KEY” – copy and paste your key into these two places, between the “”.

5. Run the setUp script twice (Run menu). The first time it will ask for permission to run (grant it), then the second time you select to run it you won't get any popup indication it has run.

6. Go to Publish > Deploy as web app, enter Project Version name and click 'Save New Version', set security level and enable service (most likely execute as 'me' and access 'anyone, even anonymously).

7. Copy the 'Current web app URL' and paste in a notepad file to keep safe.

8. In Articulate, add a trigger to run javascript and use the following code, replacing “Current web app URL” with your URL you copied in the previous step (in””):

var player = GetPlayer();

$.ajax({

url:
"Current web app URL",

type: "POST",

data: {"Name": player.GetVar("Name")
, "Rating1": player.GetVar("Rating1")
, "Rating2": player.GetVar("Rating2")
, "Rating3": player.GetVar("Rating3")
, "Rating4": player.GetVar("Rating4")
, "postRating1": player.GetVar("postRating1")
, "postRating2": player.GetVar("postRating2")
, "postRating3": player.GetVar("postRating3")
, "Postrating4": player.GetVar("Postrating4")},

success: function(data)

{

console.log(data);

},

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

});

return false;

9. Publish your articulate project – you need to host it somewhere like SCORM cloud or a LMS. When it has finished publishing click to open the files and edit the story.html and story_html5.html files – add the following line in under the line  or somewhere after <head>:

<script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.0.min.js"></script>

10. Go back to articulate and click ‘zip’ – then publish your zip file and hopefully it will work!

This isn’t for the faint hearted but it is so worth it if you can get it working! Good luck!

Script_for_google_docs.txt3 KB

storyline 360

160 Replies

MichaelMenge
Community Member
9 years ago
Hi there. This is really a great solutions and works almost fantastic for me. Sadly, just almost ;(

I got the script to send the name which a user enters at the beginning of the module to the google sheet. However scored points, calculated by answering a number of questions, are not transfered. If I change the field to receive the "Name" value (instead of "Points") it works fine. So I suppose it's just related to the variable not being mapped correctly? The quiz result slide does correctly show scored points.

Any help would be appreciated :)

data: {"entry.1309481895" :player.GetVar("Name"), "entry.774564750":player.GetVar("Points")},
LeslieMcKerchie
Staff
10 years ago
You're finding good threads Warrin and hopefully someone will have the answer/solution you are looking for.
WarrinRichins
Community Member
10 years ago
I'm going to speak in non-technical terms because that is what I understand best.

the two things that I want on my spread sheet are 1- students name and 2- students score on the quiz (game)

and possibly 3- how much time it took.

So I have made my spreadsheet and named the columns Student name, students score.

I have also followed the other directions but now my question is-

Where? and at what point? and how do I specify that these are the variables I want to have on the spreadsheet?

Thank you!
- KateRobertson1
  Community Member
  10 years ago
  Hi Warrin,
  
  Firstly, you need to create variables called 'Student name' and 'students score' in Articulate. Then you create a trigger to execute the the following javascript (replace 'current web app url' with your own url as described in the original method':
  
  var player = GetPlayer();
  $.ajax({
  url:
  "Current web app URL",
  type: "POST",
  data: {"Student Name": player.GetVar("Student name")
  , "students score": player.GetVar("students score")},
  success: function(data)
  {
  console.log(data);
  },
  error: function(err) {
  console.log('Error:', err);
  }
  });
  return false;
  
  Hope that helps?
LeslieMcKerchie
Staff
10 years ago
For anyone following along, I wanted to let you know that Abhishek asked a similar question here as well.
SteveFlowers
Community Member
10 years ago
A) Yes. It will work for concurrent users.

B) The spreadsheet has no way to know if it's the same user. However, you can use formulas to find =Unique() from one sheet to another and get the last value or a calculated value.
AbhishekRoy
Community Member
10 years ago
Thanks for the great tutorial.

a) Will it work for concurrent users ? I have several users taking the course at same time ?Will it create a seperate row in Google Spreadsheet for each user ? or overwrite in the same row ?

b) The most important aspect i want is that the same row in the sheet should be used for a particular user for that specific attempt / session. Not create a new row for the same session whenever the javascript trigger is executed in Storyline. The JS trigger is set on each question slide to keep track where the user has left the course if he/ she exits the course halfway without completing it. Currently it creates a new row for each question.
AshleyT-Pollard
Staff
10 years ago
Thanks Ken for that update and I'm happy to hear you were able to figure it out!
KenRussom
Community Member
10 years ago
Actually I found the problem. I had one variable that was killing the script. Renamed it to shorter less cryptic name. Got things exporting fine.

Thanks for everyone's help. Actually it pretty simple once you past the 'brain freeze'
KenRussom
Community Member
10 years ago
Thank you Alison, I've been working on this and followed the example exactly, even had a 'tech' guy look at my work and we're still not having any success.

This is hosted on wordpress and the site is Http:// not Https:// . Someone told me that wordpress might strip all scripts.

In the process of setting up another server for testing, I'll let you know.
AshleyT-Pollard
Staff
10 years ago
Thanks Alison for sharing that - and it's worth noting that as of August, Google Drive no longer allowed for hosting of HTML files. With that in mind, you'll want to look at a web server such as Amazon S3 - we've got a great tutorial on this here.

Forum Discussion

Exporting Variables into a Google Spreadsheet

160 Replies

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