July 26, 2011

Creating Menus and Showing the Visited Links using Advanced Actions

Scenario: You are creating an eLearning course, which spans into multiple modules. You want to tie it all together and have a Menu page from where you would like to access these modules. You also want to enable bookmarking so that a tick mark appears next to the module name, after the learner has viewed the module.

Here’s an example:

Let’s see how we can achieve this with the power of advanced actions and variables.

So… let’s get started!

Step 1: Create the Menu Project and Modules
We need to create a project with menu items, which would navigate to other modules of the course. Here’s how these projects look like.

Step 2: Enabling Navigation between the Projects
Following demonstration shows how every project is linked to main menu project. In this case, we are linking the projects together through Open another project action.

Step 3: Determine whether any Module has been Visited
Whenever user clicks the button to view the module, we will store that information in a variable. Following demonstration shows how we can play with variables and advanced actions to achieve it.

Step 4: Show a Checkmark and Disable Navigation if a Module is Already Visited
Once we store the information that a project has been visited, we will use that data to show visually a checkmark on stage. Also, we will disable the button interactivity. This is possible using conditional actions. Following demonstration showcases that.

Step 5: Creating a Single SWF using Aggregator
Following demonstration shows how to create a single SWF using Aggregator.

Hope this post is useful for you!

Posted by Vish12:29 PM
  • Patrick Smith

    Is there anyway to pass data between the menu and the modules? For example, the “visited” variable would be more accurately set at the end of the module, not upon clicking the menu button.

    • Viswanat

      Hello Patrick, It may not be possible to pass the value for the variable between projects but one workaround I could suggest is to restrict the main menu button in the other modules for the last screen alone.

  • Jeff

    Thanks for the post. Am I correct in thinking that this approach will only work when the content is not hosted on an LMS? What approach would you suggest when the deliverable is a SCO loaded on a LMS system?

    • Viswanat

      Hello Jeff, Yes this would work with the content not hosted in LMS.

  • sj

    Thank you for the posts. It would be great if you can show as the end result before or at the end of the demo.

  • sj

    Thank you for the posts. It would be great if you can show as the end result before or at the end of the demo.

    • Viswanat

      Hello sj. the demo in the beginning shows the final output. Let me know if that’s fine.

  • Tufit

    Hi,
    I have a few questions:
    1) Please could you tell me, how to make in Aggregator Project the TOC show quicker? Now, when I publish my course with 25 lessons in, the TOC loading for about 3-6 minutes. I have also a problem with PreLoader. It dosent show off at all.
    2) Could you give me any advices how to create Aggregat Projekt will have my skin with bolders.

    Looking forward for your answers.
    Thanks a lot.

    • Vish

      Hello Tufit,
      1. TOC should not take much time to get populated. Where is the course hosted? Is it on a LMS? Which Captivate version do you have?
      2. At present it is not possible to customize the skin of an Aggregator but you could always do it for Captivate Projects.

  • Mdlepage

    Hi. Great post!
    But I can’t seem to get it working on Captivate 5 (windows). No check boxes show up after returning to the main module. If I’m running this locally, could it be Flash security settings? Or do you think there’s something else I should check?? Also noticed that I can’t suppress the TOC in Aggregator in this version.
    Thanks,
    m

  • tufit

    How can I create scorm project which automatically send resume on mail?

  • Ann_cushman

    Thanks, Vish. I have a quick question. Since we use the eLearning Suite, we use the Multi-SCO Packager. What is the difference between the Aggregator and Multi-SCO Packager? They look like the same to me. Does the Aggregator still produce the Manifest file? Or can you only do that in the Packager? Thanks!

  • Tufit

    How to make button, which will appear on screen, will observe we all 5 Rollover Area?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=501245478 Dvir André Tzanua

    Is it possible to show quiz grades from the modules in the main menu?

  • Tufit

    How to do this in SCORM?

  • Tufit

    Creating Menus and Showing the Visited Links using Advanced Actions – HOW DO THIS WOULD WORK WITH THE CONTENT HOSTED IN LMS IN SCORM?

  • Reji Raj KK

    Hi Vish,
    Thank you for the post.
    I tried out the same, everything works, except for ONE. In Aggregator, when I go into the Settings, I do not have “hide TOC” option. I am using AC 5
    Please help.

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