Adobe Captivate: Using Aggregator

by Kevin Siegel

In an ideal world, your Captivate projects would be kept to a respectable number of slides (fewer than approximately 100). Why? Larger projects will take longer to produce, longer to publish, longer for learners to download and, most importantly, longer to complete.

I suggest creating lessons that a learner can finish within five minutes, which typically translates to around 80-100 interactive slides. Of course, there may be occasions where you want to take several small projects and bring them together into one project--without actually copying slides or objects from one project into another.

If you publish your Captivate projects as SWFs, you can combine multiple SWF files into one lesson using the Aggregator. Once added to an Aggregator project, you can publish the combined files as a SWF, EXE file, PDF or HTML. The published Aggregator file will include a TOC using the names of the separate SWF files.

To ensure the uniformity of Table of Contents (TOC) settings across lessons, you can set any SWF in the TOC as the master. The TOC settings of the master are applied to all the other SWFs in the Aggregator.

1. To create an Aggregator project, first publish some of your Captivate lessons as SWFs.
   
   
2. Choose File > New Project > Aggregator Project.
   
   
3. From the bottom of the window, click the Add Module button and open the SWFs you published.
   
   The SWFs will appear in the Module Title area of the Aggregator. You can double-click a module's name and rename or edit it as you like..
   
   
   
   
4. Publish the aggregated projects by clicking the Publish Aggregator Project tool.

 

Branching to Other Lessons From an Aggregated Project

It's certainly possible that you'd like the learner to end up in a lesson outside the modules you have added to the aggregated project. You can do it and fellow Captivate developer and trainer Mark Fletcher has provided the steps to success:

1. Open the source cptx file you want to branch from.
   
   
2. Insert an interactive object (such as a Click Box).
   
   
3. Set the Properties of the Click Box to Open another project from the On Success menu.
   
   
4. Browse to locate the file you wish to branch to (you can also choose from a recently opened project from the Project menu).
   
   
5. Save and Publish the source and target cptx files as SWFs.
   
   
6. Add the files to the Aggregator project.
   
   
7. Publish the Aggregator project.
   
   Clicking the Click Box in the published file you want to branch from will now jump to the swf you want to branch to and highlight that lesson in the Aggregator TOC.
   
   Note: When you publish the source cptx file, Captivate should display a message indicating that files/projects are linked to the open project and that these may also need to be published.

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Looking to learn Captivate? We have a couple of options... we still offer two online classes for Captivate 4, Beginner and Advanced. Click here for details on the Beginner class. Click here for details on the Advanced class. We also have a 3-hour class devoted to Advanced Actions. Click here to learn more about that class. Lastly, we've got classes for the new Captivate 5. We are currently offering a Captivate 5 Essentials class and an Advanced Captivate 5 class.

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Comments

[David]

Question: Whatever happened to the SCORM spec about the 7+- 2 slides rather than 80-100 slides for knowledge retainability? Well, I know, I've broken this rule because of client demands. What's best practice from your past experience?

Thx,

David

[altford]

Hi I have a problem when I try add a swf CP5 to
aggregator gives an error "is not a adobe captivate AS3 File"
and was generated in the same CP5 ....someone else has this error? .....
thanks

[Narissa]

Has anyone resolved Captivates ability to open PDF files referenced in a project when they are published individually or Aggregator as an EXE file? This is a real problem when clients request to have projects created in CP4 placed on a CD.

[Hilton]

Hi Kevin, I think this is a cool gadget. I use Captivate 4, which may be why I can't seem to rename the modules? Do you know? Thank you!

[Kevin Siegel]

Correct. Renaming the modules is new in CP5's aggregator.

[Crazdode]

Hai
Is there any option to change the appearence of the play back control of the aggregator project.in usuall projects we change the playback control from TOC tab.

[Kevin Siegel]

Sorry to say, but the Aggregator is what it is... and it's not much. There is little you can do in the way of customization like you can through Captivate directly.

[wheat]

I use Aggregator for everything. The Cp5 version supports overlay mode and adjust the width and alpha of the TOC.

[kathmazur@gmail.com]

You can rename Captivate 4 modules. Click a few times on the module name. You'll eventually get an insertion point so you can make changes.

[robynzee]

Hi, can anyone out there helpe me out? I'm just wondering how the "Branching to Other Lessons From an Aggregated Project" scenerio works with an LMS if the files need to be output as SCORM.

If I create a buttons (for each lesson) and tell it on success to open a separate swf files, will it send the information of slide views/quizzes/etc. to the LMS for reporting from an SWF file? or do I need to manipulate the files within the zip folder to manually add in additional files it needs?

[Sharon]

With Aggregator will it control on the user side where they left off within the module?