Forum Discussion
Storyline slide stuck loading
I'm having an issue where reviewers (both in Review360 and in my LMS sandbox — we're using Cornerstone) are getting stuck on a specific slide with the three loading dots. Refreshing the page (in Review360) or closing and resuming the course resolves the issue. When looking in Review360, the screenshots that the system auto-collect show the next screen, implying that the transition is successful on the "back end" but this doesn't display to the learner.
I've seen the posts about results slides — that isn't applicable here.
This slide is built from a template used 2 other times in the course — the issue is always on the last one, never the other two.
It seems to only happen to each user once per platform, so testing is tricky.
I'm using a hotspot as the trigger to change slides. The trigger is of the form "when the user clicks 'HS_Confirm1': Set (variable) to (other variable), Jump to slide (slide) if (other variable) =/= (blank)." See screenshot below. This trigger setup is identical to the slides that are working properly.
The slide that is being loaded is also a copy of the slide that gets loaded in the other scenarios — the only difference is that the other 2 have video or audio that plays when the slide loads and this version does not.
You could try to use the "brute force" approach and delete/rebuild the slide, or disable triggers and publish/test again.
4 Replies
You could try to use the "brute force" approach and delete/rebuild the slide, or disable triggers and publish/test again.
Hi AlexKeene,
Thanks for sharing all those details, that helps paint a clearer picture. I can see why this one’s tricky to pin down, especially with it only happening once per user.
MichaelHinze’s suggestion is a good general fallback. Rebuilding the slide or isolating triggers can sometimes clear out anything unexpected in the setup.
Since this is happening consistently on the last instance of that template and only once per user, it might be worth looking a bit closer at how the trigger and variable are behaving at runtime. Even though the trigger setup is identical to the other slides, something in the context of this specific instance may be affecting how it executes.
A couple of things that might help narrow this down:
- Temporarily remove the condition on the trigger to see if the slide transition works consistently
- Try replacing the hotspot with a simple button to see if the behavior changes
The fact that Review 360 shows the next screen in the screenshots is especially interesting, since it suggests the trigger is firing but the slide isn’t fully rendering for the learner.
If the issue continues, I’d recommend sharing your Storyline file in a support case so the team can take a closer look at what’s happening in your setup.
Replacing the hotspot with a button seems to have fixed it.
EricSantos - I'd suggest that any time the best answer is "Oh that's weird, try building it again even though you've done everything correctly," the product team might want to take an actual interest in understanding what's causing the underlying issue. Troubleshooting basic triggers shouldn't be necessary; we're not doing complicated stuff on this slide. This is the type of thing that ought to "just work." Just some advice. Eventually, the Articulate AI tools will stop being shiny and new, and people will have access to similar tools that are cheaper (or free). When that happens, if you've been neglecting basic functionality and usability the way the issue I brought up suggests, you'll start losing market share the same way Captivate did.That’s a fair point, AlexKeene, and I appreciate you calling it out.
What’s happening here is that while the workaround resolved the issue, the underlying behavior you ran into isn’t something we’d expect, especially with a relatively straightforward setup.
In this case, replacing the hotspot with a button helping points to something specific in how that interaction was being handled at runtime, rather than an intended limitation of triggers or slide navigation.
You’re right that in situations like this, it should “just work,” and needing to rebuild or swap elements isn’t an ideal long-term solution.
If you still have a copy of the original file where the issue was happening, it would be really helpful for our team to take a closer look and understand what’s causing that behavior. You can share it in a support case here, and we’ll dig into it with you.
