Dare to Share - part 1

Intro

Wondering about that title? It could be my motto: I'm not afraid to share whatever I discover about Captivate as faithful fans do know. Title is not about me, it has a different meaning. With some articles, this is the first one, I want to persuade you to give the new Shared actions a try. There is very little available about them, no tutorials, two recorded webinars (guilty about both), a presentation at Adobe Learning Summit in October 2013. Rare comments on the forums or in the discussion groups I'm attending daily are mostly negative: 'Too restricted', '... not useful at all'. Quotes like that remind me of similar negative attitude when advanced actions appeared in Captivate 4 (clunky interface), when I started blogging about them after their improvements in Captivate 5. Now most intermediate and advanced users do still complain about advanced actions but... they are used more and more!

Today I start with a small sequence of articles, to get you up and running with shared actions. I will also explain limitations (of course) and have my fingers crossed, hoping those limitations will be broken down by the Adobe team in future release(s).

Get your feet wet with Hide/Show 

The statements Hide and Show are perhaps the most used in advanced actions. And as you probably know, to avoid the play head being released when such a command is executed, you will often turn to a standard advanced action instead of a simple action. I explained this extensively in a previous post: Why Choose Standard over Simple Action in which you'll also find a link to a video on YouTube showing the work flow. First shared actions that you can put in your Library and use over and over again by importing that library as external library in any project. Here is the step by step work flow for the creation of a shared action that shows two 'items'. An item can be anything: 
  • a text container, an image, audio object or any other non-interactive object like a static widget/interaction
  • a button, click box, text entry box or any other interactive object (like some interactions, widgets)
  • a group of objects
I will explain the work flow for a shared action 'Show2' that Shows two 'items'. If you want to follow along, be sure to have at least two objects on a slide, that are initially hidden by unchecking the option 'Show in Output' in their Properties panel. And... it is easier when you label them

Step by step

  • Open Advanced Actions dialog box, you'll act like for creating a Standard action
  • You can add the Action Name now or later; we will not use this action as an advanced action. If you add the name Show2 you will be able to keep it when saving as shared action or change the name.

  • Create the two statements 
  •    Show Object1
       Show Object2
  • Press the button 'Save  As Shared Action' (see first image in Gallery

In the Shared actions dialog, give a Title, Description of the shared action, description of the parameters - the parameter name is not important (those are the present object names) but description is (second image in Gallery)

In the Advanced Actions dialog box, the shared action will appear in the dropdown list for the script templates (see third image, only script template that is always available is Blank)

The Shared action will also appear in the Folder Shared Actions in the Library (see fourth image: this shared action was already applied 4 times, if you didn't apply it, number 0 will appear for Usage).


Use case: Highlight boxes

Watch this example movie, click on the green arrow in the center:

As you could see in the fourth image of the Library for this one-slide movie, taken from a presentation I did for the Adobe Education Summit in Barcelona (2013) about Flipped Classes, I used only 3 shared actions:

Hide2 is used once for the close Highlight button that appears with each highlight box

Show2 is used 4 times, triggered by the 4 shape buttons (bubbles) to show a highlight box

Show2Hide1 is used 4 times by click boxes over the collaboration circle, to show the 4 bubbles

Try to create the three shared actions. In the next part I will explain how to use them to create this slide.


Feedback

Let me know if you want to learn more about shared actions, their power and limitations. You can post a comment.

In the future, I plan to offer online training about advanced/shared actions. Let me know, by sending a note to the info@lilybiri.com) if you would like to participate.

Upvote Upvoted 1
7 responses
Lilybiri, Could this be accomplished with just one clickbox instead of 4 clickboxes, using a conditional action that counts the number of clicks?
— Jay Fresno
Of course, Jay, have multiple examples on my blog but with advanced actions. This post has its focus on the most easy use of shared actions. That is why I used multiple click boxes, and simple standard actions. Will turn to more complicated examples in later posts.
— ir. Lieve Weymeis
Lilybiri, That makes absolute sense becausethe focus is on shared actions. I'm still rather a newbie on actions, and was just wondering IF it could be done that way, and you have answered that. Thanks for your spectacular contributions to the Captivate community!
— Jay Fresno
Hello, thank you so much for this blog. I have learned so much. I have a quick question. When I save my advanced action as a shared action, the parameters do not show. I could not figure out why. Could you help? Thank you!
— Betty
Do you have objects that will be turned to parameters? Or do you use variables/literals in Expressions, Conditions?
— ir. Lieve Weymeis
Toni
— Antonio Gudino
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