Forum Discussion
Issues with making a "Skip ahead if passed" quiz optional
I'd like to use the "skip ahead if passed" feature to create a test-out quiz. However, I want to make the test-out optional; if a user doesn't want to attempt it they should be able to skip it and just take the course.
I tried achieving this by putting a button stack before the quiz. One button goes to the quiz, and the other button goes to the lesson after the quiz.
Unfortunately this seems problematic, because if you skip the quiz, you can advance using continue buttons, but if you navigate backwards at all, the continue buttons are gone (which is normal behavior) but the navigation is still locked.
In other words, once you've activated a "skip ahead if passed" quiz, the quiz is the ONLY way to unlock subsequent content.
This results in the user getting stuck, and not being able to proceed without going back to the quiz and passing it.
Is there some workaround for this? Has anyone else tried making a "skip ahead" quiz optional?
8 Replies
I’ve run into this too. Would love to know if there’s a clean workaround!
Not sure if there’s a built-in way to do this cleanly, though. It would be useful if the quiz could be marked as optional while still keeping the “skip ahead if passed” behavior.
I'm having this very same issue. When we first tested the Quiz/Skip Ahead feature we were able to bypass the quiz and go directly to the content, then advance through the sections and after completing the training would register 100% complete w/o taking the quiz. Because of this we started moving all of our compliance Storyline line content into RISE; we require our new colleagues to review the full content, and our existing colleagues are permitted to test out. Now, with this latest release, navigation is restricted, it is forcing new hires to complete the quiz. This is a serious issue for us; we can't force newly hired colleagues to test out of compliance training. Is there a way to release the Restrict Navigation when Skip Ahead Quiz is so it can be optional.
This is a structural limitation, not a bug in your setup: once a lesson uses "skip ahead if passed," Rise treats that quiz as the gate for everything after it. There's no "optional gate" concept, so skipping the quiz strands the learner.
The pattern that works is to branch BEFORE the quiz instead of trying to make the gate optional:
1. Add a choice lesson ahead of the quiz with two buttons: "Test out — take the quiz" and "Take the full course."
2. "Test out" jumps to the quiz lesson (skip-ahead enabled). Passing unlocks the rest.
3. "Take the full course" jumps past the quiz straight to the first content lesson.
Now nobody is ever asked to both skip and complete the quiz — each path has exactly one job.
One heads-up for the LMS side: check your course completion setting. If completion is quiz-based, the full-course path may never report complete — "viewed all content" (or the equivalent in your LMS) covers both paths more reliably. Test both routes end to end in SCORM Cloud before publishing.
Thank you for the reply. The new release is forcing restricted navigation. I have buttons in my first section; users click a button to go to content if they are new hires, or go to test if they are existing. The setup is 1) Getting Started (buttons), 2) Quiz, 3) Content sections begin. Those who are new go to 3) Content as expected, but when they reach the end of the first content section they cannot advance to the next section because the 2) Quiz was not completed. I tested this a few weeks ago before the new release and everything worked beautifully, those who are new started at 3) Content reached the end and at the end everything was marked 100% complete. It doesn't do that anymore.
That's a frustrating regression — and useful detail, because it means the pattern I described broke with the new release. Your setup matches what I suggested, so the change is on the restricted-navigation side: it's now treating the skipped quiz as an incomplete gate on the skip path too.
If you can, flip the course navigation to Free and re-run the "Take the full course" path. If completion hits 100% again, you've isolated it, and that's worth filing with support as a regression — "worked a few weeks ago, broke after the release" is the sentence that gets these triaged fast. That's the route I'd push on rather than rebuilding the course around it.
Curious what support says — my money's on this being a bug rather than an intentional change.
I had published the original version (with functionality I need) to Review 360 and sent it my SME for review (allowed branch button/ new hire was able to skip the quiz and go directly to content, then the course completed at 100% when they reached the end), I received positive feedback. Then after the new release SMEs couldn't continue the review because the branch button was corrupted, ie, when they clicked the button to take them to the content a white screen popped up saying "Hmm, we can't seem to find the page you're looking for." The Help Desk is saying the restricted navigation when skipping has always been set. Since I can't provide evidence of the way it "was" working I sent them the Reviewer link and asked why that button no longer works.
I figured out a workaround to move users past the quiz by inserting Continue bars at the end of each section, this moves them to progress to the next section. I was happy with the solution until I reached the LMS publishing page, there I see the completion trigger for "Storyline Block" is disabled, the only option is course completion 100% or a passing score. Since users who bypass the quiz won't reach 100% completion and we need a completion trigger for our LMS this decimated my solution, I needed to use the final block as my completion trigger. It is beyond me why Articulate is limiting this functionality only to organizations that require all learners to take the quiz, rather than supporting a broader range of training needs.
