If you have seen some of my use cases or tutorials, you are aware of the fact that I am a big fan of Shared and Advanced actions. Advanced actions are part of Captivate since version 4 and made it possible to extend Captivate’s functionality in many ways.  Their release was the reason I started blogging to show how easy it is to  create engaging courses without the need of learning a programming language. You just use the point-and-click interface of those actions, which are converted to a programming language on runtime.

With Captivate 7 Shared actions were included, a more flexible alternative for Advanced actions. The main goal of those shared actions is reusability!  That reusability is due to the presence of parameters, which can be filled in on assigning a new instance of the shared action to an event. Shared actions will be listed up in the Library, the same way as other assets. As I explained in the blog post Library? Which Library you can open the library of any project in a new project, and drag the assets in the library of that new project. That is also the case for shared actions. Captivate 8 extended the functionality of shared actions by adding the possibility to define variables and literals as parameters.

Shared actions can also be used as templates for new advanced (or shared) actions, a feature that is not very well known but very useful as well.

If you want to see shared actions ‘in action’, you can register for this webinar, organized by the eLearning Brothers on Thursday, 15th of March,  4pm CET (8am PT). You are welcome to get lot of tips from a user addicted to shared actions. Registering is possible using this link:

Dare to Share

Be sure: you’ll walk away with many creative ideas!  As a plus: you’ll be working in the brand new Advanced Actions dialog box of Captivate 2017.