Forum Discussion
Slide state: reset to initial state?
Hi all,
After numerous users reported a loss of their progress, our LMS provider suggested to us to reduce the amount of characters which are saved in the 'suspend-data'. To do so, it was suggested to us to set the option on the slides in our courses to 'reset to initial state'. Rather than 'automatically decide'. This should greatly reduce the amount of saved characters.
All fine. However, I am unsure to do so. What would be the consequence? There's a lot of triggers with variables. For instance, to mark that you've visited certain slides. That still worked, after setting those slides to 'reset to...' and testing it. Would that work for all slides? What does it actually do?
Thanks for explaining!
Hi Sara,
Slide states and variables are treated differently in Storyline as the state of an individual slide only affects the slide itself, whereas variables are accessible and can be changed throughout the course.
If you set a slide to "Reset to Initial State" when revisited, it will reset the timeline of the slide to ensure that all components of the slide can be viewed again, just as if the user was visiting for the first time. However, it will not change any variables associated with that slide. This can only be done using triggers.
If, on the other hand, you have a trigger on a slide that resets a variable, that will still occur. The point to note here is that you may wish to reset some of your variables for your slide to work properly. This was probably originally catered for by setting the initial values for some of your variables, but these values will not be reset again as this only affects the point at which the course was started.
I hope this helps and isn't too confusing, but should you have any further queries, just get back to me here.
Hi Ned,
Thanks for your reply.
Let me see if I understand your last para. If I set a slide to "Reset to Initial State" when revisited, and there are triggers on that slide, the triggers are triggered again? And say that trigger is a number variable (for instance, add +1 to variable 'page count'), that slide trigger would be triggered every time that slide would be revisited, correct?
I don't think I have any such triggers and variables, only true/false variables and visited/checked states on objects.
Hi Sara,
That is correct. Basically, if you reset a slide to its original state, it acts exactly as it did the first time it was visited. Its timeline is reset to the start and any triggers associated with the slide should act exactly as they did the first time round.
As far as your True/False variables are concerned, you may still need to reset some of them. If, for example, a variable is changed from False to True to show that a particular layer has been visited, it will already be set to True when the user revisits the slide. Depending on how you have then used that variable, it may prevent a layer being shown when the slide is revisited.
I do not really understand the logic behind this, if we are going to reset the page to it's initial state, why do they not have it built in that "anything" associated to that page is reset as well, including variables. I can think of very few reasons to have it the way it is and several to have it reset "all".
Has anything changed with this recently? Does resetting slide property still not reset variables?
Resetting the slide to its initial state doesn't reset any variables used on the slide. It was programmed that way on purpose.
As Ned said in his comment above, a variable is accessible from all slides. When a variable's value is adjusted, it maintains that value until a trigger changes it. That's partly what makes variables so useful.
Multiple slides might refer to the same variable . Yet some of those slide might "Reset to initial state" and some might "Resume saved state." That could make a variable useless if resetting also reset variables.
To reset both states and variables, you need to restart the course.
