15 Replies Latest reply: Aug 20, 2014 12:43 PM by ziofonta222 RSS

    CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?

    renovator99 Community Member

      Hi,

       

      We have found shared actions pretty intuitive after a lot of experience with AAs. You write your specific AA and then you can save it as a generic shared action, with all the objects (images/text captions etc) replaced by holders. You can then use that shared actions as a template to write another AA (taking much less time since you just have to replace the holders with the specific objects you want the new AA to apply to). OR - and this is the new bit I really like - you can directly attach the shared action to your button/widget/smart shape etc. Then click on the {P} next to the shared action name and put in the object names from a list. THAT is really cool. You can then apply this action to whatever object you want.

       

      The down-side is that once you've made shared action we can't find any way to edit it, or delete it. So if you make a shared action and then decide you want to add additional actions to it you have to make a new shared action to save it to. We can easily see our projects ending up with HUGE and confusing lists of shared actions, since we tend to modify them as I go.

       

      Is there a way around it ?

       

      rgds Renovator

        • 1. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
          renovator99 Community Member

          Sorry just found it in the help

           

          "

          Delete shared actions 

           

          Right-click the shared action in Adobe Captivate Library, and click Delete."

          • 2. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
            Lilybiri CommunityMVP

            Indeed and just FYI: you can edit a shared action, just save it with the same name. Managing the shared actions is pretty well done. I'm preparing a webinar for the 22nd of August, that has its focus on shared actions.

             

            Lilybiri

            • 3. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
              renovator99 Community Member

              Thank-you Lilybiri our staff are excited and looking forward to the webinar.

              When we save the shared action we still get "this name is in use". Can you please go through the steps?

              We are using the 64 bit Cp 7 on windows 7

               

              rgds and thanks for your time Renovator

              • 4. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                renovator99 Community Member

                Also we have been playing with exporting shared actions and found that shared actions create two files. 

                One of which is an XML which might allow a external scripting

                Do people have any more information on this file ?

                 

                regards Paul

                 

                an info.txt fie with a version number e.g

                --------------------------------------------------------------

                VERSION:0

                BASEFILE:ShowThings

                 

                a zipped xml file with a cpaa extension

                --------------------------------------------------------------

                 

                <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

                <SCRIPT>
                  <TEMPLATEDESCRIPTION>Show an object</TEMPLATEDESCRIPTION>
                  <SIGNATURE>Text_Caption_1</SIGNATURE>
                  <DECISION>
                   <IF_STATEMENT>
                    <REGULARACTION_LIST>
                     <REGULARACTION>
                      <ACTION_CODE>Show</ACTION_CODE>
                      <ARG1TYPE>OTHER</ARG1TYPE>
                      <PARAM1>Text_Caption_1</PARAM1>
                      <PARAM1DESC>Object to show</PARAM1DESC>
                     </REGULARACTION>
                    </REGULARACTION_LIST>
                   </IF_STATEMENT>
                  </DECISION>
                </SCRIPT>

                • 5. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                  Websmiths Community Member

                  I've managed to delete this, but unfortunately this removes any links to the action that has been created, making for potentially lots of legwork to reinstate the links.

                   

                  I've been using shared actions to show a bunch of items one after the other, but I can only test it as a shared action, which means making the action, saving it as shared, applying it to the items and testing it. If I've made a mistake or need to tweak the action for some reason, I have to go through the whole process again; for every time I want to make a tweak (can be very frustrating).

                   

                  If I try to save over an existing shared action it says you can't (no option to replace it, you have to delete etc…

                   

                  It would be great if you could either edit a shared action (don't understand why you can't) or at least save over an existing one with the same name, which would then (hopefully) maintain the links (even if the parameters need to be updated this would be heaps better).

                   

                  Am I missing something?

                   

                  Cheers,

                  Julian

                  • 6. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                    RodWard CommunityMVP

                    No you're not missing anything. All of your points are valid. Shared Actions need a lot of work before they are going to be truly useful.

                     

                    I personally couldn't see much benefit to Shared Actions other than the ability to finally have some functional way to transport actions and variables from one project to another.  However, once you do get the action into another project and set it up as a Standard or Conditional action, you are almost always better off duplicating it and editing the duplicate rather than trying to continue using the original Shared Action.

                     

                    With Cp 7.0.1 you can now just copy and paste entire slides from one project to another so as to bring across related variables and advanced actions.  This to me is far better than shared actions.

                    • 7. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                      Lilybiri CommunityMVP

                      Whereas the new shared actions are certainly not perfect for the moment, the parameterisation of variables should be (and I believe it is) top priority for the next release, I don't agree with Rod's point of view. Maybe we'll have to look for another way of 'good practice' than for the normal advanced actions. I have been trying to explain the results of my personal exploration in the webinar referenced to in this thread. And I'm using shared actions all the time since they were added. 

                       

                      One tip: you need more preparation IMO, not just plunging in. And I will always first tweak an advanced action (and keep it in the original file) until it is working as I want before saving it as a shared action. And the second work flow (use a shared action as a template instead of applying it directly) has its advantages over duplicating actions as well. This is not the place to discuss that I suppose.

                       

                      Lilybiri

                      • 8. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                        Websmiths Community Member

                        Thanks for this Lilybiri. I have found them useful for showing a range of items on a click, rather than having to write a separate action for each item (I haven't figured any other way of doing a 'loop').

                         

                        For example if I want the user to click several things to show several items, then proceed after they have all been clicked I've set up:

                        • a variable as a counter

                        • a variable called 'goCount', which is the number of objects to show before moving on – this can be set on enter slide

                        • then I write action so that when a user clicks, the counter is incremented (glad that's now in the actions list – I previously used an expression: counter = counter + 1), an object is shown, then a test is done to see if the counter has reached the goCount, if so then it proceeds.

                         

                        I save this as a shared action so that I can reuse it and tell it to show a different object for each item clicked (as the item to show becomes a parameter in a shared action – a can't figure another way to do this with advanced actions [wish I could]).

                         

                        The only way I can get this to work is as a shared actions because that's when the parameters become active – hopefully your comment suggests that these will be added to normal advanced actions : )

                         

                        The other thing I'd love is to be able to disable click-continue events on buttons etc. It's very frustrating that when I say click once only with no action on the last click it still treats a subsequent click as a continue event. To avoid this I've had to make buttons disappear after they're clicked. My biggest bugbears with Captivate are that avoiding repetition is very difficult and that things don't do what they say they will. Perhaps I need to understand how controlling it with javascript works better, but I find this cumbersome as well – for example a simple alert to tell the user that a link will be opened in a new window is very difficult to achieve with reliable results – I think some of this basic functionality should be part of the core. Oh, and the fact that I have to pay over and above my Cloud membership for what I consider to be a rather clunky app jarrs too.

                         

                        At any rate, rant over, and thanks, I've found your various posts illuminating and useful, so thanks for that.

                         

                        Cheers,
                        Julian

                        • 9. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                          RodWard CommunityMVP

                          Setting up one variable as a counter will not tell you WHICH specific items got clicked.  What if the user clicks the same item multiple times?

                           

                          You need to have a different tracking variable for each item that gets clicked and have this variable initialised at 0 but then assigned to 1 when the item gets clicked.  In your conditional action the final decision block should look to see if all of these tracking variables are set to 1 and if so then show a button that allows the user to proceed.  You don't want to have the action set to jump to the next slide as soon as the last item gets clicked otherwise they won't have time to view the content before being jumped away from the slide.

                           

                          I think you will find most of your 'bugbears' with Captivate's advanced actions can be resolved by learning more about how they work:

                          http://www.infosemantics.com.au/e-books/guide-to-adobe-captivate-advanced-actions-01

                          • 10. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                            Websmiths Community Member

                            True, it won't. I've just used it where I want to ensure that the user has clicked all the items available on the slide (in any order). That's why I've had to hide the buttons to avoid a second click, which updates the count (or continues) regardless of whether I've told it not to.

                             

                            e.g. if there are 7 items on the page I can set the goCount to 7 on enter slide, put my action on 7 items, and once they're all clicked it will continue. (I also have a reset action to reset the counter etc. upon exiting the slide.) This way I can use the same action on several slides regardless of how many items need to be clicked on any particular slide.

                             

                            I'd prefer it if I could set up an array of values and work through that array, rather than have to make a separate variable and separate action for everything I want to do, otherwise it gets very repetitious and tedious.

                             

                            I'm sure if I learned how Captivate works I'd potentially have fewer bugbears – I was thrown into an urgent project and have had to find my way to a large extent, so my opinions come from a background of web coding and DTP (don't get me started on how limited typography in Captivate is). I realise that some of the things I'm trying to do (like animating numbered lists  – jeepers, how difficult is that??!!) are probably considered dodgy by those in the know, I just feel that some of the conventions (around saving repetition etc.) I've learned in other areas are poorly developed within Captivate.

                             

                            Thanks for the link tho!

                             

                            : )

                            • 11. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                              Lilybiri CommunityMVP

                              I explained both work flows in the webinar about shared actions: one with the counter (where a clicked link is disabled to avoid multiple clicks), one with the different variables where you allow the user to click multiple times on the same link0 The recorded webinar can be found here:

                               

                              Prepare and share advanced actions

                               

                              You'll need an Adobe ID, the same you use for this forum

                               

                              Lilybiri

                              • 12. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                                Websmiths Community Member

                                Thanks for this, having a look now.

                                 

                                 

                                • 13. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                                  ziofonta222 Community Member

                                  right now I was looking where to edit shared action, and I'm astonished i cannot edit them after they are saved! This is a big waste of time if you need for example to add another action to the set, or to edit a parameter (i applied a glow effect using the shared action, but i cannot change the effect amount, this is just an example). They need to be editable, otherwise they are unuseless!

                                  • 14. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                                    Lilybiri CommunityMVP

                                    You can delete a shared action, from the Library, provided its usage is 0.

                                     

                                    Editing a shared action:  have a workflow, not that tough at all and will blog soon about it. Last post in a sequence about shared action. The idea is to use the shared action template, and create a new shared action from it. When the original shared action is not used, you can delete it and save the edited with the same name. Telling that they are useless is IMO bit harsh if you don't know all the functionality of shared actions.

                                     

                                    Of course, only in CP8 shared actions have their full power. Parameters are limited in CP7.

                                    • 15. Re: CP7 Shared actions - can you delete or edit them ?
                                      ziofonta222 Community Member

                                      I'm using Captivate 8. I agree that shared actions are an improvement of the advanced actions and I'm also using them, I myself came to a solution by creating an action template to edit and then save as shared action to add/modify actions in place of an existing shared action, but this method isn't really practical (you must write all parameters description each time, re-assign the new shared action to all the associated objects...etc). By itself the actions usage in Captivate is very slow to implement compared i.e. to Flash actionscript window. I understand that Captivate developers have chosen to "address" commands and variables usage to avoid scripting errors for the user, but I would also have allowed "advanced scripting" with a faster tool like a window-code or similar. Adding action by selecting commands and variables by drop-down choices, line by line, in the advanced action panel is a veeeeery slow process for complex projects. Shared action helps to save time avoiding to create lot of advanced actions, but when you are in need to apply frequently modifications to them, they are really not comfortable anymore. At the end, shared actions are nothing more than object based functions, this thing could be achieved allowing user to define his own functions much more easily and with much more control and speed for editing. Looking back to succesful tools like Flash, they set a "basic mode" for the script window, similar to the actual Captivate scripting process, that allowed user to select functions and parameters in a guided way, and also an "advanced mode" to allow free scripting to code much more quickly and custom.