Using Advanced Actions to Make a button appear only after three other click boxes have been clicked.

Question

I'm working on an interactive brief, and I'm making slides where the user has to click the correct items and then a "Contine" or "Next" button appears so they can move to the next slide.  Any help out there?  I have been using Captivete but I do not have a lot of experience withthe Advanced Actions.  I'm sure this is a pretty simple solution for all you captivate Wizards out there.
I'm using Captivate 5.5.
Thanks for any help!
heymattmann

Answer 1

Hi Matt,
Can you post some pictures of the Advanced Actions you're trying to use that aren't working? It might give people some ideas of specific ways to help you. It can be a bit frustrating to start out, since there's not a lot out there in Adobe's official stuff for Adobe Actions, but Lilybiri's blog really is a great resource.
Others might do this differently, but for your scenario, I would create 3 similar Advanced Actions, each one assigned to execute On Success for a clickbox, and three Variables to keep track of whether or not the user has clicked a particular box. There's also your next button, which starts out hidden. Make sure to name it something like NextButton so you can find it easily in the dropdown box when making your Advanced Actions.
So I might name the actions and variables: actionClickBox1, actionClickBox2, actionClickBox3, and varClickBox1, varClickBox2, varClickBox3 (when you create the variables, set their default values to 0). You can call them whatever you want, just don't reuse names anywhere else-- you will run into problems.
The idea behind the actions is that each time the user clicks a box, you change the variable for that box to keep track of the fact that it has been clicked. That part you were on the right track for. The next part of the action then checks to see if all the clickboxes have been clicked (aka, if all the variables have been changed from their original values to the new one). If they are, it shows a next button. If not, it does nothing.
From what you said, I think you were trying to add an Advanced Action to show the next button to the next button itself. This would only execute when the user clicks that button, which makes it impossible-- you'd have to click the next button in order to show the button so that you can click it... oh dear. The decision of whether or not to show the next button needs to be part of the clickbox actions, so that upon clicking the third and final box, the next button will pop up. Because it makes this decision (to show or not to show) on each clickbox, the order you click them in doesn't matter. It will only show the next button once all the variables have been changed.
You will see that the actions are all very similar, except for the variable that they change:
actionClickBox1
first tab in the conditional action:
     if varClickBox1 is equal to 0 <-- default value of variables must be 0
     then assign varClickBox1 with 1 
second tab in the conditional action:
     if varClickBox1 is equal to 1 AND
     if varClickBox2 is equal to 1 AND
     if varClickBox3 is equal to 1
     then show NextButton
actionClickBox2
first tab in the conditional action:
     if varClickBox2 is equal to 0
     then assign varClickBox2 with 1
second tab in the conditional action:
     if varClickBox1 is equal to 1 AND
     if varClickBox2 is equal to 1 AND
     if varClickBox3 is equal to 1
     then show NextButton
actionClickBox3
first tab in the conditional action:
     if varClickBox3 is equal to 0
     then assign varClickBox3 with 1
second tab in the conditional action:
     if varClickBox1 is equal to 1 AND
     if varClickBox2 is equal to 1 AND
     if varClickBox3 is equal to 1
     then show NextButton
Hint: If you set up one of these actions and save it, you can click a button in the top right hand corner to duplicate it and then just change the few things that are different to make the next action. It saves you from having to create it three times from scratch!
Wow, this is long... I hope it isn't overwhelming in its length, and that it helps! Advanced Actions really are a cool feature once you get past their quirks...