Oracle UPK - Linking a Package into a Content Object

The final step is to link the Package into a content object. You can link it via a hyperlink or an icon, just as we did for Web Pages above (see the section Using Web Pages in Topics), but there is something much more interesting that we can do. Essentially, we will link the Package (or, specifically, a file within the Package) into the Contents pane of an Outline element. Given that we have put the entire presentation for our course in the Package, it would make sense to link this into the Contents page of the highest-level course Outline element. Let's look at how to do this, and what it will do for us.

2. Click on the Create link button ( ). The Insert Hyperlink dialog box is displayed, as shown below:

3. Make sure that the Type field at the bottom of the dialog box specifi es either Packages and Web Pages or Packages.

4. Navigate to and select the Package that you created earlier. In our example, this is a Package named Presentation.

5. Double-click on the Package to open it (or click on it to select it and then click on the Open button). A list of all of the files and folders within the Package is displayed, as shown in the next screenshot:

6. Click on the file within the Package to which you want to link. In our example, we want to link to the main index file of the Articulate Presentation, which is the player.html file, so we will click on this file to select it.

7. Click on the Open button.

8. Click on the Save button to save your changes to the Outline object, and then exit from the Outline Editor tabbed page.

We have now successfully linked a file within a Package to a content object. In case you missed that, we have linked a file within a package to a content object. You cannot link to a package as a whole; only to a specific, single file within a package. (Although if you absolutely needed to link to an entire package then you could bundle the package as a ZIP file and then add that ZIP file to a package, and link to the ZIP file. Now, let's look at what this gives us in the Player:

You can see that the complete Articulate Presentation has been incorporated into the overall UPK Player. This is fully-functional: you can use the navigation bar on the left to locate and select slides; you can execute any Quizmaker learning activities included in the presentation, and so on. The only problem is that some of the text is a little small.

If you insert an Articulate Presentation (or similar package) into your Outline and this is set to auto-play, then it will start playing as soon as the user opens the outline element to which it is attached. In the example above, this is the first element in the hierarchy, so the package will start playing as soon as the trainee opens the Player. This may catch them unawares, and they may miss the start of the presentation. In this case, remove the auto-advance from the first slide in the presentation, and add a button called "Play" (or something equally obvious) that has an action of "Next Slide". Then, the presentation will not start playing until the trainee clicks on the "Play" button.

Generally, I would not advocate including a presentation in a Concept pane. Exercises are components of presentations, so presentations should link to exercises, and not the other way round. How to link from a presentation to a specific exercise is
explained in Chapter 6, Publishing content. However, the above example does at least demonstrate the possibilities that UPK offers for "improving" the trainee's learning experience through the creative use of Packages.