Summary: Add code to a hyperlink in Engage to link the interaction to a slide in PowerPoint.
Difficulty: Medium
It is not every day that you come across a new “hack” that you know is somehow bound to make it into the annals of Articulate development. Well, we are going to look at one which lets you link from any step in an Engage interaction embedded in your PowerPoint presentation to any other slide in the same PowerPoint presentation.
First, have a look at an example I put together showing how a labeled graphic can link to different slides in a presentation and be then linked back to the Engage interaction.
I didn’t do the whole map – just the orange markers link to other slides, plus the Exit link.
As you can see, the Engage interaction is used as a menu to other pages. You can therefore use any Engage interaction as a menu or sub-menu to your presentation. You can also link directly from one Engage interaction to another and back again.
How Do You Do It?
First some history.
A post on our forums caught the eye of one our developers. It was a plea to be able to link from Engage to a particular slide in PowerPoint.
Well, as easy as that might sound, this had not been possible without going into some considerable effort to create specially prepared SWF files containing Actionscript code. The code told the Articulate player to go to one slide or another. Here is an example I did some eighteen months ago. There was an easier solution, but the drawback was that the player had to restart before the slide was loaded as you can see in this example. This looked messy.
With this “hack”, we can now link to whatever slide we like from Engage without the player restarting and without having to write Flash. Here’s what you need to do:
Step By Step
- 1. Create your Engage interaction and add a hyperlink on a word. You’ll need to select some text and press the Hyperlink button:
- 2. Add this code as an http hyperlink with the last number indicating which slide in PowerPoint you want to link to:
asfunction:_level44.playSlide,5 - 3. Publish your interaction to PowerPoint.
- 4. Allow the user to leave the interaction at any time:
- 5. Now publish your PowerPoint presentation with Articulate Presenter and the hyperlinks in Engage will link to slides in your presentation (in this example to slide 5).
This hyperlink is linking to slide 5. If you want the link to go to slide 4, then replace the 5 at the end with a 4. Note too that the http:// we have at the beginning of a regular link is not used here. Then click OK.
IMPORTANT NOTES
Hi,
Can you embed a short Presenter presentation (i.e., a quiz and an interaction) in an Engage Interaction?
Also, I’ve followed your instructions for embedding Engage within Engage, and i get nothing when I click on the link. I changed security settings for my Flash player, but I am working with a firewall. Any thoughts about why those hyperlinks aren’t working?
Thanks!
Alyse
[...] to the user. If you want to use Engage to navigate to another slide in AP, Dave Perso wrote a nice tutorial regarding this on his blog. HTH, [...]
Hi Alyse, Sorry to take my time getting back to you. Hope you’ve progressed a little. You can certainly place a quiz in Engage as this article shows, but it is more difficult to place an Articulate Presenter presentation within Engage. A workaround is to place a Presenter slide within Engage. ie. publish a regular PowerPoint slide in Presenter, locate the published files and the SWF file corresponding to the slide and import that into Engage.
Regarding Engage within Engage, which link are you referring to? One on my site or a link in your project? I am not sure which hyperlinks you mean.
Hi-
This is great! I’m curious, is it possible to link text from the powerpoint presentation to the Engage Glossary tab? My client wants to be able to click on glossary terms as they come up in the powerpoint presentation and have that link point to the glossary.
Thanks very much!
Liz
Hi Liz, That would be nice, wouldn’t it? :) It is an often requested feature. Unfortunately, it is not possible for the moment. As yet, there is no workaround to get hyperlinks to link directly to a glossary other than this solution which is a little complex.
[...] You could do that, but as Justin says, you would probably be violating Google’s terms of use. This example shows examples of embedded YouTube videos in resized web objects on a slide. (Click on the demo at [...]
Hi,
I tried the suggested method of linking from Engage to Presenter, but I wanted the Presenter slide to be hidden (using Slide Properties). Probably because of the slide’s “invisiblity,” I didn’t get it to work. But just to check: has anyone managed to do this successfully? Many thanks!
Hi DaveG, I couldn’t reproduce what you describe. I hid slide 2 in the Slide Properties and was able to link to it from Engage. See demo
I am having a problem launching this demo to see where I may have went wrong. Thanks for your help
Thanks, daveperso. Now that I know that I can link from Engage to a hidden Presenter slide, I’ll retrace my steps and figure out what went wrong with my last attempt. I really appreciate your help with this! Great blog!
Dave – need your genius! I am trying to take a process (Sales Process) and
turn it into a visual roadmap. Literally, a roadmap. I want to create streets, traffic lights,
etc. Then, I was going to use Engage – Label, and as you did with the example above, take
them to different areas. Do you know of any software, sites, etc. where I can “create a city
map?
THanks in advance.
Hi Jeanette, I don’t! But maybe somebody else does. I’ll get back if I think of something.
Interesting sidenote on this. If you want to link Engage >> Engage there would seem to be a rendering issue in that the linked-to slide overlays on the player looking a bit messy. If you advance to the next slide the playershell sorts itself out but I cant seem to get the initial link to render correctly.
The work around I’m using now is to insert a standard ppt slide in front of the engage slide I wish to link to, set the Presentation Options > Publish > Slides without audio…… option to 1 second and this doesn’t appear too much of the bodge to the user (just make the ppt slide look like a pretty intro slide or something).
Anyone found a solution to this?
Oh, I should add to that that my standard presentation has no ppt slides at all (all engage, quiz, web objects etc) so lowering the timer to 1sec has no knock on effect.
Dave,
I see that you have a home button on the hyperlinked-to slide and and sometimes a forward button on you example.
How does one set the slide properties?
If I hyperlink to a slide, while in an Engage–how do I ensure the learner returns to the same location in Engage?
Marcia
Hi smurf, Yes, I was able to reproduce the Engage sliding off the window. There are no issues if you link to a PowerPoint slide. I think your solution is the best one for the moment.
Marcia, the home button is just a hyperlink back to the Engage slide which in this demo is slide 1 (I believe). Similarly, the forward button is hyperlinked to another slide (normally the next one in the presentation). To hyperlink, just right-click an object and choose hyperlink. There is nothing in the slide properties here. You cannot hyperlink from a slide to a specific step in Engage so you cannot ensure the learner returns to the same location in Engage. You can only ensure that he will go back to the beginning of a specific Engage. In my example, I used a Labelled Graphic so it doesn’t matter where the user arrives.
Hi Dave,
Thank you for this article.
I’m new to Articulate, so please bear with me :P
This is basically what I’m looking to create:
- one slide (probably Engage interaction?) where the user can pick from 3 subjects
- when they click on a subject, I want to take them to a presentation (with its own outline tab, etc) and content for this specific subject only
Is it possible to do so?
My other alternative is to have 1 presentation with 3 outline tabs, but again, I’m not sure if that is supported.
Please advice and thanks.
chieri
Hi chieri, Welcome to Articulate ! It sounds like you are trying to merge a number of separate presentations into one. This is possible though it might seem a little complicated at the beginning. It depends on how you are going to distribute the content. You could just hyperlink the items in a menu to open a new presentation on top of your main menu. Alternatively, this article shows you how you get one presentation to replace another using web objects. You could have everything in the same presentation and just hyperlink from the main menu to each section in the presentation. You wouldn’t be able to have a separate outline tab for each part but you could use levels so that each module has it’s own level (kind of submenu from the main top menu in the navigation tab). Here is an example of using levels for three products. It was a winner in the 2009 Guru Awards. Hope that helps.
Hi Dave,
I am using this work around, which by the way is extremely useful. However I have a question regarding navigation. When the user has gone through all the various links and returns back to the main page for the final time how do I then get the user to go to the next slide in the course? Having turn all the navigation off I can see how I can get the user to move on. Any suggestions?
Hi Alice, Nice to hear from you! By the sound of it, you don’t want your learners to be able to move on until they have viewed all the links in the menu? As I see it, there is no easy way to do that. If you are not concerned about making sure that they have viewed everything, then of course, you could just place a hyperlink on the slide which links to another slide. If you only want that link to appear once they have seen everything, the only way I can see would be to get the learners to do the modules in a pre-defined order and each time they finish a module, you send them to a different but almost duplicate menu which would give them access to the next module. When they have finished all the modules, you’d send them to a final menu which would allow access to all the modules they had already seen plus a hyperlink to continue in the course. The user would think they were being sent to the same menu throughout the course. A fun method I used for children was to give a password at the end of each module. Using all the passwords, they would then be able to access the rest of the course by completing a Fill In the Gap question slide and inserting the appropriate code. The quiz settings would either allow them to move on, or send them back to the menu. The advantage with that method is that users can view the modules in any order. However, writing down codes and entering passwords might seem a little fastiduous or even childish for professionals!
Sweet one Dave, this is a great hack. Genuinely easy to do and really useful. Just combined this with the transparency trick and together they really help. Cheers
Hi Dave,
Thanks for your reply. The way I would like to use this engage slide work around is in a course with other slides that follow it. However as you rightly say there is no way to tell the learner to move to the next slide – it is like a cartesian loop. The only thing I thought of was to add ‘Click here to move forward’ text box with a hyperlink to the next slide that is set with an animation time delay of 5 or 6 mins or something of that nature. I am testing this at the moment. I really like this approach as it really allows you to expand on the information you are presenting. Is there any chance Articulate could add this enhancement to their product?
Hi Alice, The best way to get enhancements to Articulate products is to make a feature request via the Articulate website: http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/feature/ . Why? Because they all get read from the main deciders within the company, from the President himself down. I guess we are looking for some kind of variable support where the variable here is what slides or links have been followed. I know that we are looking at some kind of variable tracking for a future release so maybe that will be the solution. Incidentally I am wondering if you cannot harness the Next Slide button feature in Engage which only appears when all the modules have been viewed. If you chose an Engage interaction like the Process interaction where the user had to go through all the steps first to get to the next step, then when they came to reach the last step, the Next Slide button would appear allowing them to move on. Worth looking at, maybe.
Hello Dave,
Would your “code as hyperlink” trick work also in a self created .swf background ?
your collegue Tom explained recently in his blog how you can subsitute the original presenter background swf file with a self created one with roll over buttons. You can do this ( creating the own swf background with roll over buttons, without programming skills using simple flash tools) BUT the roll over doesn’t work any longer correctly when you put in ppt an object on top of the background roll over button (once a hyperlink is attached to the ppt object) (So that’s not very usefull) Tom then described a work arround with adding action scripts in flash to overcome this issue.
But if you don’t have flash programming skills like me this is no solution.
So I wondered wether a similar “trick” of using such code as you described in this article (“asfunction:_level44.playSlide,5) would also work when you put a similar code in the url of the action “on click” in the .swf file with the roll over buttons.
I would be able to do that without any programming skills and only using very expensive flash generating tools like freestyle flash (or even snag-it). So I could create the the menu with roll over buttons INCLUDING the hyperlinks in an easy flash tool and integrate that easily in presenter by substituting the background swf file.
wouldn’t that be rapid-elearning like ? no programming involved.
Thank you for your reply,
Peter.
Hi Peter, Thanks for your question. That particular code would not work but you could certainly add ActionScript to a SWF file. It is not too difficult to do if you use a relatively inexpensive program like SWF Quicker. You don’t need Flash programming skills. I wrote an article on using the Articulate SDK recently which shows some very basic examples of linking from a SWF file to a different slide. It doesn’t tell you how to do it since the code is part of the Articulate SDK which you need to purchase. There are some global commands that will also change the slides via ActionScript which you can try and which are free. I’ll hunt them out for you if interested. If you have the Platinum Membership Plan, then you are entitled to the Articulate Presenter SDK for free. You’ll find a host of commands that you can use as outlined in this documentation. By the way, here is another article showing how you can change the background SWF to add visual impact to your courses. Regards
Hi Dave,
thanks to your help I got my rollover button menu as a background .swf fully working. I added the actionscript with the SDK commands in a very easy way using the SWFQuiker software you were mentioning.
Afterwards when seeing how easy this is, I wondered why it took me about 5 hours to get this working. But now I know how to do this, I will make alot of use of this, and maybe this is my first step in using the SDK even further.
I am however interested in the global commands which are free. If this works, wouldn’t that be possible to share that with other users.
Thanks again.
Hi Peter,
I am happy to hear you managed to use SWFQuicker. I am assuming that you have the SDK. The global commands were actually intended for Presenter 4 but still work apparently but there are only 4 or 5 basic commands, not like the SDK commands. They are mentioned on the forums somewhere and yes, I guess I could share them. I just couldn’t find them yesterday but I’ll look them up. Best regards
I’ve given this a try, and the hyperlink does go to the appropriate slide, however, the slide that I’m linking to which also contains an Engage Interaction does not appear correctly. It’s set to display in a “standard view” , however, the interaction appears as if it is overlayed on top of the standard view (meaning, the interaction takes up the upper left half of the player and overlays the menu bar and the main player window ,
Also, I loose the “next slide” button when publishing my final presentation.
Any thoughts ?
Hi Dave,
I am having the same problem as Matt with the final hyperlink on one of my slides, the interaction moves to the upper left hand side of the player?? Any suggestions?
Hi Alice, I see your colleague has come up with a solution ! Yes, there is a problem here. My workaround is to place a blank slide just before the Engage I am linking to and use the Audio Editor to make that blank slide just appear for a fraction of a second before automatically moving onto the second Engage. I used that technique in this demo, the Learning the Interface tab. There is a blank white slide which appears for about 0.3 seconds I think which merges into the loading blank white page of the next Engage interaction. I have yet to examine Jonathan’s solution but it looks interesting ! You are lucky to have such good support !
Hi Dave,
Have the same problems as those above. IS that we can’t really use standard view with this method and need to use “full view”? Also– I tried to set branching so that it would return to the original Engage interaction, but that doesn’t work — it still goes to the next slide. So do we need to build our own hyperlinks back?
Thanks
HI Dave,
Sorry, I just saw the answer upthread. I was linking from Engage to Engage.
I read above that people are having trouble with hyper linking from engage slides, to other engage slides in a non chronological way (eg. 3 to 7) using ‘asfunction:’.
I have scripted a fix for Alice…
This fixes the problem with the content being displayed incorrectly (in the wrong place)…
Kindest regards,
Jonathan Harvey
Creative Designer – Oilennium.co.uk
Hi Jonathan,
Alice is lucky to have you ! Unfortunately you are using proprietary code from the Articulate SDK in the code you mentioned in your post so I have had to cut it out from this blog. However, if anyone is interested in receiving it, just send me a mail quoting your serial number so I can check for SDK ownership and I’ll forward Jonathan’s clever suggestion on to you. And if anyone is interested in getting the SDK check out this article here. It is normally part and parcel of the Platinum Membership Plan but we might (not my decision) be able to make exceptions for blog readers.
Thanks for the kind response Dave. And the heads up.
Dear Dave,
thanks for your precious tips.
I followed your instructions and added a hyperlink in an Engage interaction linking to another Engage interaction (using asfunction:_level44.playSlide, number_of_my_slide).
Unfortunately, clicking on the link, the second slide appears “over” the presentation (like “floating”) and not not inside it. How can I solve it? Thanks in advance.
Carla
Hi Carla, This is a known issue with this code. One solution is to do what smurf suggests in the comments to this article and that is link to a blank slide which slips on automatically to the Engage slide. It is what I did in this demo from the post Using Articulate Without PowerPoint. Hope that helps.
Dear Dave,
thanks for your reply. I’ll try it as soon as possible!
Carla
This is wonderful work around. Thank you.
When I try this out noticed that if I am using not the slide only mode but the standrd mode with th Outline column visible and the link is to another slide containing another engage, the display will not be the correct windown but will overlap the outline column on the left hand side of the screen. Is this suppsoe to happen?
Hi there, This is a known issue. You can see Smurf’s comments on July 1st 2009. I have also amended the Notes section of the article to speak about this issue. Hope that helps.
Dave … I was directed to your hack by Jim DiSorbo. I tried it, but without success. I am doing an eval on Studio 09 and the capability I am trying to test is pretty much what you included in your hack. Any further guidance or insight is appreciated.
d.
I created a CONTENTS dropdown, using the Tab interaction. This hyperlink works great, but my engae interaction stays open. For example, I click on a subject to go back and review further. The link works, but then the slide starts playing with the Engage interaction still up. Any thoughts on getting the interaction to close after clicking the hyperlink?
Hi Andrew, have you managed to solve this? I am not clear on the issue. You should be linking from an Engage interaction to another slide in the same presentation so I don’t understand how the Engage is staying open if you are going to the other slide.
Hi Dave. This is brillinant. And it is working almost perfectly except upon some linking back to my main course page (the one that has the clickable spots to brach deeper to other engage interactions) I get the “would you like to resume your presentation where you left off” yes/no dialouge box. I need to get rid of that. Thoughts?
Hi Luke, Yes, you can resume the resume function in Articulate Presenter via PowerPoint -> Articulate -> Player Templates -> Player Controls -> Uncheck the box ‘Prompt to resume on presentation restart’.
Hi Dave, cool trick. I have used it within the carousel interaction where I allow the learners to choose from a variety of avatars. Before they move on to the course, they are be presented with a welcome slide that says “Welcome Avatar X” (or Y, Z etc… according to their original choice and THANKS to your trick).
They are then taken to the regular course which ends with a final quizz, and this leads me to the following issue: I want to personalize the final quizz with a final slide that would congratulate either Avatar X, Y, or Z according to the learner’s original choice. This won’t happen unless I either insert some code or I run 3 different sets of the same course… Since I don’t want to go for option #2, do you have any brilliant ideas regarding the code option ? :-)
Cheers.
Hi there, that’s a nice way of using the code. I can’t think of a way of getting Quizmaker to show the correct avatar though other than option 2. I thought of adding passwords to access the quiz and branching accordingly but that is tantamount to asking what avatar they are anyway. I’ll let you know if I can think of anything.
Hi Dave, I would like to get the code you mention above “proprietary code from the Articulate SDK” on your post from September 10, 2009 at 3:01 am. If you can email me I’ll send you my serial number
Hi Alison, I just send you a mail. Dave
Hi Dave, I have used your awesome hyperlink hack and am having the problem with the screen becoming displaced. I would love to have the code thing mentioned in the September 10, 2009 at 3:01 am post.
If not I will have to place the blank slide in before the interaction I wish to hyperlink to. How do I minimise the timeframe for the blank slide to 0.3 seconds?
Hi Kylee,
The code is part of the Articulate SDK. If you can mail me your SDK serial number, I’ll see if I can contact the author to forward you his work.
Best regards,
Hi Dave,
Can you provide step by step instructions on how to hide the blank slide/ prevent it from showing up on the list of contents? I’ve been trying different options including slide properties and for some reason it doesn’t seem to work for me.
Thanks,
Bryan
HI,
I have used the asfunction:_level44.playSlide,5 code on many occasions but this time I am having a problem. I have a Presenter presentation where i am using this piece of code to direct the learner from the middle of one engage interaction to a second engage interaction. In the second engage interaction, the completion button is set to show always. However, even though it shows up in preview, the completion button does not show up when published. Do you have any insight into why this might be happpening?
Hi Mary,
I finally got round to testing your scenario. In my experience, linking from one Engage directly to another using the asfunction technique does lead to problems. In particular, the second Engage slips “north-west”. As you indicated, the “Next Slide” button also seems to disappear. This might just be a limitation of the code that we found. The way to work around it is not to link direct to another Engage, but to link to a blank page that you show for just a second or so which then leads on automatically into your Engage slide. You’ll find the Engage will not slip to the top-left and the “Next Slide” will work as expected. Hope that helps.
Is it possible to put the hyperlink on a picture or shape? I know you can add media, but I can’t figure out how to put the link on that media.
I’m working with FAQs to introduce the key concepts of employment laws. In other places in the presentation, I’ve got a picture that they can click to learn more. Every time they click the picture, it links to a summary of a related Supreme Court case. So, I’d like to be keep that technique inside the Engage interactions…same picture and text.
Any ideas?
I am having a problem getting the links to work at all. I too have hidden slides and have them all programmed so they work ok, but the link from the engage out to the slides is not. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
got it to work – total user error….thank you this is a great solution!!
[...] Linking from Engage within Engage and/or to Presenter – Dave Moxon http://daveperso.mediaenglishonline.com/2009/01/27/how-to-link-from-engage-to-presenter/ [...]