Technology – Page 2 – The Logical Blog

December 18, 2014

eLearning: More Reflection

by Kevin Siegel

Last week I wrote about how you can use Reflector to create software simulations and demonstrations from your mobile device.

I received emails from several people who, having read the article, downloaded Reflector and attempted to create a simulation using Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline. While most folks were successful in reflecting the mobile device onto the computer, several people reported that none of the actions they took on the mobile device were captured by the eLearning tool.

As I mentioned in last week's article, the reflection of the mobile device you see on the computer is passive; you cannot control the reflection with the computer. Instead, you can simply see what's happening on the mobile device through your computer.

During the simulation recording process, if you're creating a software simulation, programs like Captivate and Storyline only capture the screen if you click your mouse (or manually create a screen capture by pressing the appropriate keyboard shortcut). Since you're not clicking anything on your computer (remember, the computer is simply showing you a reflection of the mobile device), neither Captivate nor Storyline will capture anything.Unless…

On your computer, start the recording process using Captivate or Storyline. Just prior to performing an action on your mobile device, click the reflection on your computer to create a screen capture. Next, on the mobile device, perform the action. Back on the computer, click the reflection again to create a second screen shot that shows the result of whatever it is you did on the mobile device. Continue this process over and over until you have completed all of the processes you wish to simulate on the mobile device.

If clicking over and over again to create a simulation sounds too difficult, all three of the top eLearning development tools (Camtasia Studio, Captivate, and Storyline) excel at creating videos. If you create a video of the reflected mobile device, everything you do on the mobile device is captured because the video isn't creating individual screen shots, it's capturing everything you do without discrimination.

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If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn more Captivate, Presenter, or Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you.

December 16, 2014

Technical Communication: Don’t Wordpass on Passwords

by Megan Pitkin

During one of my recent Electronic Medical Records (EMR) classes, a student asked about best practices for creating a password. Many people use the same password for everything (and I mean everything… from accessing Facebook to logging into their online banking account). Believe it or not, passwords are often very easy to guess. In fact, here are the top three most common passwords in use today:

Common Passwords
Note: The image above features an avatar of Megan. If you'd like to create your own avatar, check out AJ's article.

Given the rampant reports about hacked accounts that have occurred in every industry, a strong password has never been more important. This is especially true in healthcare.

To create more secure passwords:

Use passwords with eight or more characters with characters of mixed types. (Keep in mind that common substitutions for passwords like Med1c1ne are vulnerable and random combinations are difficult to remember, like m%&5Bg$d.)
Use passphrases. Short words with characters or spaces separating are easy to recall. Rather than using common phrases, it is best to use random words as your phrase such a dog walk leash or sing_moon_jump.
Do not use the same combination of username/password for multiple sites.

Ensuring safety and protection for patients by properly creating and protecting passwords is critical. I found it surprising that the FBI's most wanted cyber hacker got arrested the same week this question was asked of me. Why was he caught? His cat's namewas his password.

I won't elaborate on why I felt this was ironic, but I do feel it is important to highlight this cautionary tale.

Patient information is precious and should be treated appropriately since healthcare workers are the majority of keepers and the first point of contact for the electronic medical records.

Note: If you're finding it difficult to keep track of your passwords (perhaps you're following my advice and you're using different passwords for every site), consider a password manager. PC Magazine has a nice list of some of the top password managers available.

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If you like Megan's articles, you'll love her live, online classes such as Train the EMR Trainer.

December 5, 2014

Adobe Captivate: System Time Variables

by Lori Smith

Last week I showed you Captivate's date variables. This week, let's take a look at the Time variables, the System Information variables, and a handy little variable called cpInfoMobileOS.

Adobe Captivate: Time Variables

Specifically, I am going to address the variables listed in the table below using 2:15 PM and 32 seconds as my example.

Adobe Captivate: Time Variables

Perhaps you do not like military time (24 hour) and instead you want to use 12 hour time. A little advanced action can easily convert military time to 12 hour time. I have also created two user variables to help out: am_or_pm and myHour.

Adobe Captivate: Variables in use.

When added to a text caption as shown below, the variables will display 2 PM.

Adobe Captivate: Variables added to caption.

Now let's talk about the cpInfoEpochMS variable. It can be used to determine the play time for a lesson (or part of a lesson). By subtracting the value of the variable at the beginning of the lesson from its value at the end of the lesson, you can calculate the lesson's play time down to the millisecond. In the image below I have created a couple of Advanced Actions that make use or CpInfoEpochMS and a few user variables that I created:startTime, endTime, and timeElapsed.

First, you need to capture the lesson's start time using this Advanced Action:

Adobe Captivate: Lesson start time Advanced Action

At the desired point in your project, capture the time and calculate the timeElapsed.

Adobe Captivate: Time elapsed Advanced Action.

Last but not least, let's cover the cpInfoMobileOS variable. It's only job is to indicate if the learner is using a desktop computer of a mobile device (iPhone, iPad, etc). If you have certain elements or slides in your project that you want to behave differently depending upon the learner's device, you can use this variable in a conditional Advanced Action to create the desired behavior.

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Looking to learn Adobe Captivate? We offer several Captivate classes. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your training requirements.

November 5, 2014

Adobe Captivate: Replacing PowerPoint Slides But Keeping the Audio

by Kevin Siegel

I received an interesting email from a fellow Captivate developer who was in a bit of a pickle. The developer had imported a 60-slide PowerPoint presentation into Captivate and then added audio to each of the Filmstrip slides.

Just as he was about to Publish his finished project, he was told to use a different PowerPoint presentation. Mind you, it wasn't just that the imported presentation had changed and he needed to update it in Captivate. In that case, all he would have had to do is click the presentation's red "not in synch" icon on the library and the new PowerPoint content would have come into the Captivate project. In this instance, he was given a completely different presentation (the same audio was going to be used, but each slide visual was going to change).

Since the developer had already invested time importing the 60 audio files (files he was going to use on the replacement slides), he contacted me hoping he wasn't going to have to start over from scratch.

The bottom line is he didn't have to start over again and was able to reuse all of the imported audio files. Here's what I instructed him to do:

First, visit the Library and rename the audio files so the name of each audio file matches the slide where it was used. (To rename a Library item, right-click the item and choose Rename.)

Adobe Captivate: Rename Library items.

In the image below, notice that I've renamed my audio files so the names match the slide that's currently using them (slide1Audio, slide2Audio, etc.).

Adobe Captivate: Renamed Library Items.

Next, delete all of the imported PowerPoint slides. Because Captivate projects must have at least one slide, if your project only contains PowerPoint slides, insert a blank slide first (via Insert > New Slide From). Then delete all of the slides except the blank one.

The above step can seem extreme and nerve-wracking because you're deleting all of those awesome slides. But keep in mind you'll be replacing the deleted slides with new slides in just a moment.

Check out the Library. Even though you deleted the slides, the audio files are still in the Library. Notice the Use Count shows a bunch of zeros because none of the audio files are being used.

Adobe Captivate: Unused Audio Files

Import the new PowerPoint slides into the Captivate project (via File > Import > PowerPoint Slides).

Delete the blank slide you added earlier and, as a final step, drag the unused audio files from the Library onto their corresponding Filmstrip slides.

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Looking for instructor-led training on Adobe Captivate? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Captivate classes.

October 23, 2014

Adobe RoboHelp: In Word We Trust

by Willam Van Weelden

If you have attempted to create printed documentation with RoboHelp, there is a good chance you have run into a macro error. RoboHelp uses Word for printed documentation, and this error occurs if Word's security settings don't allow macros.

You can enable macros in Word, but that may not be enough. Some Help Authors receive unspecified errors when generating printed documentation even with macros enabled. To solve this, RoboHelp projects must be added to Word's trusted locations. I'll show you how to both Enable Word Macros and add projects to the trusted locations.

Enabling Word Macros

Start Word.
Click the Office button (Word 2007) or go to the File tab (Word 2010-2013).
Click Options.
Select Trust Center and then click Trust Center Settings.
From the Macro Settings area, select Enable all macros.
Close the Trust Center and the options.

Go to RoboHelp and generate the printed documentation. In most cases, RoboHelp will create a Word document out of your Help System. If RoboHelp still doesn't generate the printed documentation, you likely need to add your RoboHelp projects to Word's Trusted Locations.

Add RoboHelp Projects to Trusted Locations

Start Word.
Click the Office button (Word 2007) or go to the File tab (Word 2010-2013).
Select Options.
Select Trusted locations and then click the Add new location button.
In the Microsoft Office Trusted Location dialog box, click the Browse button and open the folder containing your RoboHelp projects.
Select Subfolders of this location are also trusted.
Click OK to close the Microsoft Office Trusted Location dialog box.
Close the Trust Center and the options.

Go to RoboHelp and re-generate the printed documentation.

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

October 16, 2014

eLearning: Adding Videos to eLearning… The Results

by Kevin Siegel

Last week's poll about how eLearning developers work with the storage demands of video in eLearning garnered several responses. Here are the results:

Which eLearning development tool do you use the most?

Adobe Captivate
Adobe Presenter
Articulate Storyline
Articulate Presenter
TechSmith Camtasia Studio
Other (please specify)

While many developers use two or more of the tools listed above, the majority of respondents use Adobe Captivate the most (56%). Second was Camtasia Studio (24%) followed by Articulate Storyline (16%).

When adding video to your project, which option are you using?

Video stored on your computer or network
Your corporate media server (or a server you created on your own)
A media service
Other (please specify)

Most developers (54%) store the videos on their computer or server. Media service placed second (38%).

If you set up your own media server, tell us your story. Specifically, what hardware and software did you use? What did it cost to set up?

Top comments about this question: "Previously attempted to do this with Adobe's Flash Media Server but it was too complicated and expensive. Did Windows Media Streaming as it came with Windows Server years ago. Generally due to cost, I have customer setup private Vimeo account and stream from there. We're getting a beefy streaming service setup (Kaltura)."

"We have a central server for our L&D team, run by operations."

"IT set-up MediaMill for us… and we set-up YouTube channels."

If you're using a media service, which one are you using?

Top responses:

Amazon
YouTube
Kaltura

Respondents were able to select any or all of the options above. Most selected the first two (creating or including videos feature themselves/talking head or video of industry-related tasks). Plenty of people also said that they use video of a demo already created in an eLearning authoring tool.

October 3, 2014

Adobe RoboHelp: Multilevel List Sub-Numbering

by Willam Van Weelden

A few weeks ago I showed you how you can use multilevel lists to easily create complex lists with multiple levels. But multilevel lists are far more powerful than I could show you in a single article. This week, I'm going to expand on the multi-level list theme by teaching you how to add sub-numbers to lists:

Sub-numbering is important for many procedures and legal documents. You simply can't have sub numbering in RoboHelp without multilevel lists, unless you want to manually type in all sub-numbers. But with multilevel lists, you control this behavior right from the style sheet!

To add sub-numbering to a Multilevel List, first Create a multilevel list. Then, on the Project Manager pod, double-click your style sheet to open the Styles dialog box.

In the Styles dialog box, select your multilevel list. From the Apply Formatting To drop-down menu, choose a level that will use the sub-numbers.

Click in the Edit Style field and, from the Insert Level drop-down menu, choose 1.

Click OK to close the Styles dialog and save your changes.

And that's it. From this point forward, any of your multilevel lists can include sub-numbering (as shown in the image below):

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

September 26, 2014

Adobe Captivate 8: Watch for Large Cache Folders

I've written about Captivate's Cache folder in the past. In case you aren't familiar with it, a cached version of your project is created in the Cache folder every time you save your Captivate project. The cached projects can make the process of opening, saving and working on a project faster than what one experienced with older versions of Captivate. However, with Captivate 8, developers are complaining about the increased size of the Cache folder.

Those folks aren't imagining things. It looks like Captivate is creating more folders of each project than before. Adobe is aware of the problem and you can expect an update to Captivate that will fix the issue. In the meantime, you should manually backup your projects (to an external drive) and clear the Cache folder at least once a month (by clicking the Clear Cache button).

Adobe Captivate: Clear Cache button

September 17, 2014

Adobe RoboHelp: Multilevel Lists

by Willam Van Weelden

Multilevel lists are an often overlooked RoboHelp feature… a shame because multilevel lists are very powerful. As the name suggests, Multilevel lists allow you to create complex lists with multiple levels. For example: consider what you would have to do if you need a list that uses upper alphanumeric characters on the first level, lower roman on the second level and bullets on the third level.

You can achieve the numbering scheme shown above by using a standard numbered list, but you would need to assign the correct list styling to every list level. That's a lot of manual labor. And it's not easy to quickly change the list style, especially if you've applied the style manually across multiple topics.

With multilevel lists, you create a single style that can be used in multiple topics throughout a RoboHelp project. And best of all: you control everything through the style sheet, allowing you to change all the multilevel lists in a central location.

In this article I will show you how to create and use a multilevel list. I will focus on the basic settings first. With these basic settings you can use Multilevel Lists in your projects. In a future article I will show you some cool things you can do with multilevel lists.

Create a Multilevel List

On the Project Manager pod, double-click your style sheet to open the Styles dialog box.
In the Styles dialog box, right-click Multilevel Lists and chooseNew.
Enter a name for your list style and press [enter].
From the Apply Formatting To drop-down menu, choose Level 1.
From the Paragraph Style drop-down menu, choose a paragraph style. (I recommend using the Normal style so that the list uses the default topic formatting.)
From the List Style drop-down menu, choose a list style. (In my example I chose upper-alpha.)
Return to the Apply Formatting To drop-down menu and select and format other levels as needed. (In the sample list pictured at at the beginning of this article, I formatted the first three levels.)
When finished, click the OK button to save your changes.

The Multilevel list is now set up and ready to use.

Apply a Multilevel List To Topic Text

Open a topic and select some text.
Click the Create a Multilevel List tool.
Select your Multilevel List in the Available Lists Styles field and then click the OK button.

Note: To change the level of a list item, click the Increase Indent or
Decrease Indent tools.

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Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

September 11, 2014

Fundamentals of Designing and Developing Cost-Effective eLearning

When: September 22-25
Where: McCormick Place, Chicago (Part of the Online Learning Conference Certification program)

There are multiple tools available that will let you create compelling eLearning content including Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, TechSmith Camtasia Studio, and Adobe Presenter. But which tool is the best, most affordable option for your needs?

Once you select your eLearning tool, what's next? How do you get started creating your first eLearning content? Once you start, how long is it going to take you to finish? What's the real cost for your effort? Are there hidden costs? How will you be able to measure the effectiveness of your eLearning?

Join IconLogic's Kevin Siegel for an intense, tool-agnostic, hands-on workshop where you'll get a jump start on building your first eLearning course.

Among other things, you'll learn:

Strategies for building effective eLearning
The eLearning development process
How to create an eLearning script and/or storyboard
How to get started on creating eLearning content using Captivate, Storyline, Camtasia or Presenter

More information.