Intro

Some time before the release of CP2017 I published a blog post, where I explained how I use the GIFT import for localising projects. Time to check if a similar solution is possible with the new CSV import. I used the provided template file, an Excel spreadsheet with macros. ‘CSVQuestionsCreationMacro.xlsm’. You find this worksheet in the GalleryQuiz. That may be a problem for users who don’t have administrator rights, because the installation folder is not always accessible for them. That is one of the reasons that a lot of folders are duplicated in the Public documents (Windows) or Shared documents.

Example movie

You can watch this movie, which I’ll also be using to explain the Branch aware functionality in a future post. After the title slide, you have a choice slide: you can opt to take the quiz in one of three languages. Or, if you are trilingual, why not choose the option ‘ALL’?

Workflow CSV import

English questions

I used the provided Excel worksheet to create these questions. I first double checked the Quiz Preferences for the Default labels, and the master slides. I took out the option to show the Progress. Reason: contrary to all other labels, when you change the Preferences to have another language, the labeling of the Progress will not remain on the existing slides. That is an annoying small bug. The progress text will always be converted to the last used language.

After importing the questions some manual work has to be done, because not everything can be set up in the CSV file:

• The positive score for each question is imported, but if you want a penalty, you will have to add it manually. Refer to the Advanced Interaction panel shown below
• For the MCQ slide with multiple correct answers, you need to set up the individual scores manually for each of the answers. With GIFT import it is possible to insert already the positive partial scores, not with CSV for what I detected.

It is very easy to set up the Matching slides, the Help documentation is not updated: you do not have to insert the pipe sympbol, there is a matching field. Nicely done!

Dutch and French questions

The third sheet of the Excel worksheet has the fields for the to be exported CSV file. However you are not allowed to edit those fields. You don’t have access to the questions as they were defined in the second sheet, so that is not a workaround.

My workflow was to use the exported CSV file with the English questions, and open it in Excel as a copy. That file can be translated to any language. You can save it as a CSV file from Excel and import in Captivate.

Before importing such a translated file, I set the Quiz Preferences to the correct language. Especially the Default labels need to be translated. For that purpose I have always a Preferences file ready that can be imported. Only newly created quiz slides will take on those new labels (also for the buttons), with the exception of the Progress mentioned above: it will also override the progress on existing quiz slides.

Conclusion

At this moment, I still have a slight preference to use GIFT files for import, especially if I need to translate questions for the same project or for other projects. Translating a GIFT file, that is already set up correctly is a quicker workflow. Being able to define partial score in that file is another plus.

In a next blog post, I will explain the ins and outs, and the setup of the Branch aware feature which has been used in the example file.