Forum Discussion
Storyline 360 Pros — What’s Your Favorite “Hidden Gem”? 💎
As someone who’s spent a lot of time working with (and on!) Storyline 360, I’ve come to appreciate the power in the little things — those lesser-known features that quietly make our lives easier.
Here's one of my personal favorites:
🎧📽️ Cue Points with the “C” Key:
I recently spoke with a customer who struggled to time trigger actions to audio and video media on their slides. They would preview the slide, make note of when a trigger should be fired, then return to slide authoring view to add a cue point to the timeline to tie into the trigger event. This would require a lot of manual back-and-forth between authoring and previewing. I often have to do the same thing, and there is an easier way.
If you use stage preview (accessible via the "Play" icon" in the lower-left corner of the Timeline panel), Storyline will stay in the slide authoring view and play the timeline of the slide, including any audio or video media that's present. As it plays, you can press the "C" key on your keyboard to have cue points added to the current playback position. It’s a simple way to place cue points in real time, right where they’re needed — perfect for syncing trigger actions to specific moments in your media.
Animated gif depicting Storyline 360's UI and using the "C" key to drop cue points on the timeline.Now I’m curious:
What’s your favorite under-the-radar Storyline feature?
Something small, subtle, maybe even a little obscure — but that you personally couldn’t live without.
Drop it in the comments — I’d love to learn what little gems you rely on. 👇
28 Replies
Using transparent shapes as hotspots, because you can change the states of shapes, but you can't change the states of hotspots.
I also use a transparent shape to cover up videos on a slide, so the video can't be inadvertently clicked. This is when the video controls are set to Show none.
FYI: Putting a transparent shape over a video (or other interactive object) does prevent it from being clicked with a mouse. It doesn't prevent someone from accessing the object with a keyboard, though.
That probably doesn't matter much with a video, since clicking/selecting it just toggles between pause and play. But that would have a bigger impact if one needs to prevent clicking/selecting a button.
My can't-do-without-it hidden gem? The Select option when previewing a course.
That dropdown lets me jump to any slide, so I can switch what I'm previewing.
Even better, when I'm previewing a restricted course, I can easily skip slides and just visit the ones needed for testing. For example, this is handy to make sure a custom menu works, without having to step through all of the content in each section.
I had no idea!!! This is going to be super helpful. Thank you!
- If I can remember to not press "enter", I love that the accessibility window updates as soon as I touch a new object.
- The object list dropdown available when I'm editing states, so that I don't have to select "done" after editing an item.
- That I can create states based on a image sequence.
- The translate function, so that I can see all of the text across multiple states in one organized fashion.
The timesaving power of conditional triggers and/or else actions. Instead of creating a trigger to disable the Next button at the beginning of a slide and another trigger to change the state of the Next button to normal after all of the objects or buttons on the slide have been visited, you can do all of this in one trigger.
The addition of the else action is a huge timesaver.
Hi Melanie - for some reason I'm having trouble visualizing the trigger. If I want the next button disabled when the slide starts, how does the if/else come into play? I've used the else action several times, but for some reason this is making my brain warp!
Hi Trey, sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean to imply that both a condition and an else action is required for that. I was just touting the power of conditional triggers and/or else actions as hidden gems.
Here is an example of controlling access to the Next button, with only a condition on a Quiz Summary slide. If the user did not pass the quiz, they cannot move past it by using the Next button.
Wow, didn’t know about the “C” key trick that’s a total time-saver!
Definitely adding this to my workflow for quicker media syncing.I’m not sure if these count as hidden gems, but as much as they're kind of low-profile features I rely on daily for client projects:
- Web Objects: My go-to for adding external content like games, forms, or other web-based elements into a project.
- Named Motion Paths: Being able to name motion paths makes it easier to keep track of them, especially when an object has more than one.
- Close Other Tabs: On my ultra-wide monitor, I often have 20+ slide tabs open in Storyline. The option to quickly close all other tabs helps keep things organized.
JesseTaber Just a quick note to say thank you and Articulate for all the great updates you’ve made to Storyline over the past few years. Almost every update has made my work easier, and I really appreciate that.
Thank you for the kind words, Montsea !
I can't remember the last time I actually used this, but here is another 'Hidden Gem": the Window trigger condition that lets you customize slide content depending on whether the slide is shown in a lightbox, or as a 'normal" slide within the playerframe.
How would you use this feature? Can you give me an example?
Ridly - Michael's right about using this feature for lightbox. The window condition lets you control how a slide behaves based on whether it’s shown in the regular player frame (default) or as a lightbox.
Example: if you have a detailed instruction slide early in your course with audio and animations, etc., you might want it to play fully the first time.
But later, if the learner lightboxes that same slide as a quick refresher, you probably don’t want the full audio and all the extras.
Solution: Instead of duplicating the slide, you can use the window condition to show a custom (or hidden) layer that summarizes the instructions. This lets you reuse the same slide two different ways without having to duplicate.
In my lightbox class, you can view this technique at 33:38. I'll post the source file when I get back to my desk.
Here is a list of useful keyboard shortcuts.
For quite some time I struggled with pasting objects in exactly the same place, as ctrl+v pastes the objects positioned a little to the right and a little down. But there is a separate shortcut for pasting copied objects in exactly the same place and it is ctrl+shift+D! It is such a time saver!
That's a fantastic hidden gem, LucynaDra!
Hidden Gem: Double-Click to Edit States
I use this almost every time I’m working with states in Storyline:
Why?
Because it’s usually way faster:
- You go straight to the state you want to edit.
- It’s quicker than moving your cursor to the left panel to click Edit States, then back to the object you’re editing.
Now if I could just remember not to use this method when I’m teaching my Intro to Storyline classes :-p
