Forum Discussion

LindsayCierra's avatar
LindsayCierra
Community Member
2 years ago

Revisit Previous Slide

I am a new user creating an e-Learning and unable to write the correct triggers to allow learners to revisit a previous slide without having to rewatch the slide until 'timeline ends'.  I have enabl...
storyline 360
JudyNollet's avatar
JudyNollet
Super Hero
2 years ago

This post provides info about various ways to control the NEXT button:

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/tip-controlling-the-next-button-101 

Re: Slide Properties:

If you set the Slide Properties to advance automatically, then the program will move to the next slide at the end of the timeline without the user clicking the NEXT button. 

  1. If the "When revisiting" property is set to "Reset to initial state," the timeline will replay from the beginning, and then the program will auto advance at the end. However, if the NEXT button is enabled, the user could click that so they wouldn't have to re-watch the timeline. 
  2. If the "When revisiting" property is set to "Resume saved state," the time resumes from whatever point it was at. If it was at the end, it'll be at the end when the user revisits--which means the program will immediately jump to the next slide again, so the user won't be able to look at the slide again.
  3. If the "When revisiting" property is set to "Automatically decide," the program will either replay or resume. It's decision is based on what happens on the slide. For example, if there are entrance animations, the program will typically decide to replay the timeline. 

The first option gives the user some control for revisiting, but it's not ideal from a usability standpoint. The 2nd option is horrible. And the 3rd, well, it'll either less-than-ideal or outright horrible, depending on what's on the slide.

Personally, I think auto advancing is usually a bad idea. If a course will simply play through from beginning to end, you might as well publish it as a video, and let the user control it with a  standard video control panel. Otherwise, the user doesn't have enough control of what they see and when they're ready to move on. 

If there is a good reason for a given slide to auto advance, but you want the user to be able to revisit the content, I suggest you do this: 

  • Set Slide Properties to "Advance by user." 
  • Create a variable to track whether the slide has been viewed or not. The easiest would be T/F variable, with a default value of False. 
  • Add a trigger that advances to the next slide when the timeline ends--with a condition so this will only happen when the variable = False (that is, the slide has not been viewed before). 
  • Add a trigger to the next slide that adjusts the value of the variable to True (so the auto-advance trigger won't run if the user revisits the previous slide). 

As the post referenced above describes, you should also use a condition on the "Disable NEXT" trigger to ensure it only runs the first time the user visits the slides.

Here's more info about conditions and variables: 

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