Forum Discussion
Show/Hide Resources?
Preface
So, since it's been 6 years since this original thread was started and Articulate still hasn't provided an option to show or hide documents in the Resources tab, I thought it might serve the community to reopen this thread--both to share our team's own workaround (which is labor-intensive and prone to causing future errors), as well as to remind Articulate that YOU GUYS REALLY SHOULD JUST MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO SHOW OR HIDE DOCUMENTS THAT ARE PERMANENTLY EMBEDDED IN THE COURSE RESOURCES (since the resources tab seems to be the only way to permanently embed files in an articulate course--either Storyline OR Presenter).
The Situation
We have hidden 'Clues' throughout some of our courses as part of a game for the participants. They need to be able to print out these clues once they find them in the course, which means we need to attach a .pdf or .png of the 'Clue' slide so that they can easily do that without printing the whole classic player, browser window, etc. Since they're supposed to be hidden, we can't include them in the Resources (because we have other non-hidden resources there that they need to be able to access at any time).
The Workaround
The alternative for embedding hidden files in Storyline is relatively simple compared to Presenter Studio: We hyperlink to a file as described in THIS ARTICLE. Hyperlinking the file is pretty simple, BUT there's a big caveat, and that is that the course will only publish with the correct file linked as long as your file structure and computer environment don't change. In other words, if I move that file later, or if years down the road a different employee needs to update the course and is working on a different system, they will have to remember to RE-choose that file in the hyperlink, otherwise the user will get a 404 type error when they click the link.
The alternative in Presenter Studio is much more cumbersome and has to be performed EVERY TIME that you republish the course--not just when you change computer environments: In this case, you add a hyperlink 'to a file', but instead of actually choosing a file, you specify the sub-directory in the future SCORM package where you will later add the file: e.g. "presentation_content\external_files\YOURFILE.pdf". Then, after you publish, don't zip the files yet. First, open up the 'presentation_content' folder and add your 'external_files' folder containing 'YOURFILE.pdf'. Then you zip the main enclosing folder and you have your finished SCORM package that you can test in scorm cloud.
...This last solution seems to be working, but it sure is annoying having to re-insert the files every time. Granted, the advantage of the Presenter solution is that once I have that link specified, I don't have to change it again as long as I re-add the file in the same place each time with the same name.
Anyone else have any better / easier solutions?
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