12 Replies Latest reply: Aug 25, 2010 1:04 PM by ycart1299 RSS

    Advanced Actions

    ycart1299 Community Member

      Hi, can anyone help me create an advanced action to control playbar visiblility.

      Basically, the playbar should not be visible until all buttons on

      the slide have been clicked. Below is how i have set up the advanced action but it doesn't seem

      to be working, although logically i think it should. I am new to captivate and using actions/variables so if someone can walk me through how to set it up that would be ideal. THANKS!

       

      I have set a variable for each button on screen, with a value of 0.

       

      Each button is assigned an increment of 1 on success.

       

      I have a conditional action set up so that:

       

      if button1 is equal to 1 and

      button 2 is equal to 1 then

      action: assign cpCmdShowPlayBar value 1

      else: assign cpCmndShowPlayBar vaue 0.

       

      Can anyone help me with the code?

       

      Thanks!

        • 2. Re: Advanced Actions
          ycart1299 Community Member

          Cap 5

          • 3. Re: Advanced Actions
            Lilybiri CommunityMVP

            Hello,

             

            I did publish several tutorials about Advanced actions in CP5, that could perhaps help you out. Try this video tutorial.

             

            Video tutorial explaining the workflow with Conditional action

             

            Link to the other tutorials can be found in this Captivate blog posting (at the end):

             

            Advanced actions/Learning interactions in Captivate 5

             

            Do you know that you made my day interesting? I was looking since a while for an example to explain the combination of a Standard and a Conditional action into one action, and you provide me with that example. Did start writing a tutorial about it, example file is ready. Will keep you informed when it is published, but explain the steps here already:

             

            You started all right by creating user variables to store if the user has clicked the buttons. And the system variable that you have to manipulate is indeed cpCmndShowPlaybar. I'll try to explain the steps:

            • If you have three buttons to be clicked, create 3 user variables, I'll call them v_click1, v_click2, v_click3
            • I do not know if the user can re-enter the slide, if that should be possible I would create an initializing Advanced action, to be triggered when entering the slide:
              • assign value=0 to the variable cpCmndShowPlaybar
              • assign value=0 to the variable v_click1
              • assign value=0 to the variable v_click2
              • assign value=0 to the variable v_click3
              • Continue
            • Your issue is that when you click on a button you will have two important things to happen:
              • you will have to assign the value 1 to the appropriate variables (v_click1 for button 1) - this is a standard action
              • you want to check immediately if all buttons have been clicked, if yes, you want to show the Playbar
            • This can only be achieved by creating one conditional action with 2 decisions (sorry if this is confusing, will try to get the tutorial ready ASAP):
              • First IF will have to result always in YES, and here you can put in the Standard action (see screenshot, decision is 'ClickAdded' and this is a screenshot of the action for the first button). For the ELSE action I rewind the playhead so that it will not continue
              • Button1Click.JPG
              • Second decision 'TestPlaybar' will check if all the buttons have been clicked and if Yes, will show the Playbar, if No will rewind the playhead to allow the user to click on another button.

            Just hope that I did understand your question all right.

             

            Lilybiri

            • 4. Re: Advanced Actions
              ycart1299 Community Member

              Thank You! This is very helpful, looking forward to viewing the tutorial to get a better understanding of the steps to set up the conditional action!

              t

              • 5. Re: Advanced Actions
                Lilybiri CommunityMVP

                Hello,

                 

                Just published the tutorial. Here is the link, ust let me know if you need more explanation (please post a comment in that case). I did not have time to make a video with audio (some other priorities):

                 

                Combining Standard and Conditional in one Advanced action

                 

                Lilybiri

                • 6. Re: Advanced Actions
                  ycart1299 Community Member

                  Thanks so much for this tutorial. i have followed it exactly, but for some reason the playbar is not becoming visible?

                  Could i email you my cap file, so you can see what i am doing wrong? It must be something silly.

                  t

                  • 7. Re: Advanced Actions
                    Lilybiri CommunityMVP

                    Hello,

                     

                    Send me a private message with your e-mail address, I'll send you a link to the file I created for the tutorial on acrobat.com. Sorry, but I do not like to offer my private address because I already had some stalkers. I'm just a user like you.

                     

                    Lilybiri

                    • 8. Re: Advanced Actions
                      ycart1299 Community Member

                      THANKS! I think i figured it out. Your tutorial was very helpful. I'll let you know if i run into any more snags once i compile the whole course. You are awesome and your help is much appreciated!

                      • 9. Re: Advanced Actions
                        Lilybiri CommunityMVP

                        Glad it worked, and thank you for providing the example I was looking for.

                         

                        If you have more ideas, do not hesitate.

                         

                        Lilybiri

                        • 10. Re: Advanced Actions
                          ycart1299 Community Member

                          There is one caveat, the playbar does not appear until after the duration of the button's caption expires. so if the caption is set to display for 20 seconds, the playbar does not appear until after the caption disappears (after 20 seconds).

                          Is there a way to display the button's caption

                          for the duration of the slide or for a set amount of time, yet have the playbar appear immediately after all buttons have been clicked?

                          • 11. Re: Advanced Actions
                            Lilybiri CommunityMVP

                            Hi,

                             

                            Do not understand this question, you can choose the 'pause' moment of each button (region Timing), make it smaller. And what is the disappearing Caption?  Could you perhaps post a screenshot of the timeline of the slide with the buttons? You can use the small still camera icon in the toolbar of the postings. Use JPEG as image format because PNG is not accepted. Do also wonder why you would need a slide that takes 20 seconds long, or perhaps you do have audio on it?

                             

                            Lilybiri

                            • 12. Re: Advanced Actions
                              ycart1299 Community Member

                              The fix was to uncheck the "pause for captions" option. Thanks for all your help!