Forum Discussion
Storyline 360 Restricted Next behavior (sanity check)
Hi. For years I've assumed I needed a trigger to disable Next in order to override the built-in behavior of it enabling at the end of of a timeline for interactive slides. (i.e. I don't want Next to be active until the user has clicked a few things so I have two triggers: one that disables it and a trigger to re-enable it after all the conditions have been met.)
But in building a demo just now I stumbled onto this: just having a trigger on the slide that changes the state of Next seems to automatically override the enabling behavior.
(Run a slide in restricted mode without any other triggers and Next will enable at the end, then add a change state trigger
Can someone smarter than me confirm if is this new or has this always been the case? I have always built projects in free mode for easier testing, so I actually have needed a disable trigger to test all my clickables (so I hadn't noticed the behavior). This will simplify my life knowing I can drop one of those triggers.
Just putting this out there as an FYI for anyone else who was unaware.
Hey TedNunes,
Happy to jump in here.
I can confirm that EricSchaffer-d1 is correct. This functionality has been present in Storyline for a while. Restricted Navigation handles it all natively.
- 'Next' auto-disables on first visit, re-enables at the end of the Timeline, and stays enabled on any revisit.
The reason you needed the extra 'disable' Trigger with unrestricted navigation is that it doesn't have any of that built-in logic, so you had to manage both ends yourself. Adding any change-state Trigger targeting 'Next' signals to Storyline that you're managing the button state manually, so it overrides the auto-enable behavior and defers to your Triggers instead.
One of our Storyline gurus (JudyNollet) shared an excellent breakdown of all the ways to control the 'Next' button if you'd like to go deeper:
Please let us know if you have any more questions!
7 Replies
Thanks Judy. The trigger you're describing is what we've been already been doing for years, which means we have to have two triggers (1. force NEXT to stay disabled, 2. enable it when interaction is complete.)
My original post explains how I didn't realize until just recently that NEXT would automatically stay disabled by adding a single trigger targeted it. Hurray, we can drop the extra trigger.
But then this morning I realized that it WILL enable if you just click Play. It seems like a bug--why have the behavior to prevent NEXT from enabling if a trigger is there, but then enable it if Play is clicked regardless of that trigger firing (and not having left the slide yet)?
I work with Nurse educator SMEs who don't trust their students to not skip over things, so I have to be robust in my navigation restrictions. I was excited to be able to drop a trigger or two, but alas. Thanks everybody for your input.TedNunes: As you've seen, a trigger can prevent NEXT from being automatically enabled when the timeline ends with Restricted navigation. In that same situation, notice that the Play button is disabled until the timeline ends. As you discovered, when you click it, the slide enables NEXT, as it would with just Restricted nav. I don't know the reasoning, but that might just be a programming oversight.
There is a workaround: Add a trigger that disables NEXT when the timeline starts*. That will run if the user clicks Play before they complete the interaction, so NEXT will stay disabled.
* A “when timeline starts” triggers runs every time the user reaches the slide—even if the Slide Properties are set to “Resume saved state.” If you don’t want the trigger to run in some situations, you need to add conditions to the trigger. For example, the conditions could check whether the state of buttons on the slide = Visited. Or a condition could check whether a T/F variable = True.
I would need to see your slide to fully understand what is happening and maybe help you with the why. If you like you can contact me directly and I can look at it for you. I would delete everything after.
Well, this is an improvement, BUT... I just discovered that after the timeline reaches the end (and NEXT remains disabled), if I click Play again, NEXT will immediately enable and a user could skip the interaction. Is this an oversight or is there a reasoning behind that behavior?
That strikes me as very normal behavior. Many eLearning courses I've taken require you to see an entire video, or complete every interaction a page once. If I've already watched the video, I have the option of reviewing it, but there's no actual reason to lock me on the page if I only wanted to repeat the first minute, then go on. I've seen it already.
Hey TedNunes,
Happy to jump in here.
I can confirm that EricSchaffer-d1 is correct. This functionality has been present in Storyline for a while. Restricted Navigation handles it all natively.
- 'Next' auto-disables on first visit, re-enables at the end of the Timeline, and stays enabled on any revisit.
The reason you needed the extra 'disable' Trigger with unrestricted navigation is that it doesn't have any of that built-in logic, so you had to manage both ends yourself. Adding any change-state Trigger targeting 'Next' signals to Storyline that you're managing the button state manually, so it overrides the auto-enable behavior and defers to your Triggers instead.
One of our Storyline gurus (JudyNollet) shared an excellent breakdown of all the ways to control the 'Next' button if you'd like to go deeper:
Please let us know if you have any more questions!
I believe it has been there for a long time now. I know a lot of people do some of the same things you have been doing, people I work with, but they miss this and make a lot more work for themselves.
