Hi there,
I am reaching out to the community because I would like to address a gap in my captivate knowledge namely ‘Decisions’ within advanced actions.
I have done a fair bit of googling and youtubing on the topic. I have also searched the PDF manual and can find little more than a single paragraph about ‘decisions’ in the whole document. However, I can’t find any kind of overview on what exactly they are and how they work. I am quite comfortable with advanced actions, variables, conditional actions and shared actions. I feel that decisions are the last part in getting a more well-rounded understanding of how things trigger within projects.
If anyone has any tips, links or explanations on what they are and how they work that would be great. But even if people would like to discuss how they use them, I’m sure we could get a good discussion going here in the forum.
happy captivating!
Fergus
Hi Lieve,
Thanks for your reply. I have bee trying to wrap my head around this for a while and I’m still struggling I must admit. Would it be correct to say that decisions are basically only used in conditional advanced actions(AAs)? AND they only form part of the ‘IF’ statement.
So then, if I am correct;
- IF Decision1=true, go to the ‘ACTION (Then)’ statement
- IF NOT, Check Decision 2
- IF Decision2=true, go to the ‘ACTION (Then)’ statement
- IF neither is true then go the ‘ELSE’ statement.
If my description above is correct then would it be true to say that ‘decisions’ are really just a way of extending the ‘ELSE’ statements?
Forgive me if I have completely misunderstood. I would really appreciate if anyone could point me towards a practical explanation/example of how the whole process works.
So far in my work, not using decisions hasn’t impacted the courses I have built(I have simply not included any AAs that require them) but I always want to learn and expand my knowledge of Captivate. Thanks, everyone for reading and helping!
No, must not have explained well.
Since CP2017 decisions can be both conditional and standard, moreover there is a new WHILE condition. Important to know is that every command, every condition is always evaluated. And the sequence is from top to down, and from left to right.
A combination of decisions which I often use is:
- First decision is standard ‘Always’, and has to be done before starting with conditional decisions. That can include incrementing a counter, or toggling a variable, changing a state etc.
- Next decisions check the value of the counter or the variable, and will do other commands based on that value. If you would include the commands of the first decision like incrementing a variable you could have issues. I explained such an issue in an older post.
Think I have refurbished that post somewhere, but cannot find it. Have written too much blogs about advanced actions.
You can have the reverse as well: first conditions or While loops, followed by commands in a last decision that can be standard.
I have been using advanced actions (and lately more shared actions) since almost a decade, feeling very much at home with them. Most users contacting me for a training are asking for advanced and shared actions.
My blog is full of use cases of advanced actions, rarely with only one decision. They are practical, I’m sure about that. You could find about 100 use cases in my blog.
It is not really an extension of the ELSE statement. Captivate cannot nest conditions, cannot break out of a complicated action. That is the important thing. It is very difficult to explain just in text how you should proceed.
I am very astonished that you never did need decisions, in almost every use case I describe I did need multiple decisions. Look at the two blog posts about Hotspots for 2D images, typical examples.
Wow, I left you ‘astonished’ that is high praise Thank you!
Yes, so far, on everything I have built in Captivate has not required the use of decisions. Everything has been tested and is working well. Just hoping to expand my abilities.
I’m good with advanced actions and I too have started incorporating shared actions into my work much more too. I guess I am still looking for ‘why would you choose to use decisions?’ – I get that the first is fully evaluated, top to bottom, left to right etc. But I can’t see clearly, still, what would make me say ‘ah here is a situation where I need to use decisions as the best way forward.’
Only one example, very common use case.
You have several interactive objects on a slide to show a lightbox. They all have to be clicked in a free sequence. When all have been clicked, the Next button has to appear. You need a variable for each clickable object. Maybe you want to change its state to a custom state (not the inBuilt Visited, which has some limitations). In that case you need two decisions:
- First ‘Always’ is a standard decision, will toggle the variable, shows the appropriate lightbox, changes the state.
- Second ‘CheckIt’ is a conditional decision, will check the value of all the variables in AND combi, and show the Next button if they all have been toggled.
I was astonished, because most actions I have to perform do need at least two decisions. Standard actions (one decision) may be common, simple conditional actions (like for a toggle) as well. But more complicated situations really need more decisions. Look at the shared action which I offered in this article:
http://blog.lilybiri.com/shared-or-advanced-use-case-hide-slash-show-custom-navigation
Four decisions were needed to have it functional in all possible situations.
In versions before CP2017, decisions only existed in conditional advanced actions. They always had the three parts: condition, Then, Else. They can be seen as individual conditional actions. Specific for Captivate is that there is no way to break out of a conditional action with multiple decisions. The full advanced action is always completely evaluated, starting with the first decision, and ending with the last decision. Lot of actions I have debugged did forget this, and had the problem that a later decision was overriding a previous decision. I have multiple use cases, and explanations on my blog which is dedicated mostly on advanced actions. Be very careful with ELSE parts….
Since the change in the dialog box for Advanced actions (have a full explanation in a blog), standard actions can be a decision, which needed a cumbersome workaround before CP2017.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
