Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Attaching External Files to Your Unison Courses

When creating eLearning courses you may often want to attach external files to your course pages. For example, if you want the user to be able reference a PDF or download a PowerPoint for later reference or use.

Rapid Intake Unison now makes it extremely easy to attach external files such as:
- PDFs
- PowerPoints
- Word Docs
- Excel Docs
- Zip files
- Any other type of file

This means you can create a link that when clicked on the user will download to their desktop any attached file. Here are some steps on how to do this in your Rapid Intake Unison account:

Step 1: Logging into your account

First log in to your account. Once logged in go to the course you want to edit and click on "Build/Modify the Course". This will launch the authoring environment.



Once the course is launched move on the step 2. Note that if you do not already have a course created you will need to create a new course in Unison.

Step 2: Creating the text for the link

Now that you have launched your course you will now need to create a link on one of your pages that will prompt the user to download the external file. Usually this is done by creating text along the lines of "Click Here to download the content" with the "Click Here" being the click-able link.

You can use any page template that has an HTML text input (pretty much any page that features text), and then type in the phrase that you want to be the click-able link as seen below. In this example I am using just a normal Text page. Usually the HTML text area is on step 2 of the template.

Step 3: Establishing the Link

Now that you have you typed in your phrase, highlight the part of the phrase that you want to be the link. Once that is highlighted click on the folder icon down below, next to the URL field that starts with "http://"

After you click the folder icon, the Media Manager should then appear.

On the top right hand side of the Media Manager there is a category labeled "Other".

Step 4: Uploading external files or using ones in the media manager

In Unison you can upload to the Media Manager any type of file that you want to use as an attachment. In this "Other" category you can see all the available files that you can use as an attachment. Up at the top you can also see an upload button. This allows you to upload any document including Word docs, Excel docs, PDFs, or zip files.

Once your PDF or any other doc is uploaded you will then see it in the Media Manager. Select the file you wish to use for this link and select the "Insert Selected" button

Step 5: Previewing your course

Now that you have your link established, you should see that text has now turned blue and is also underlined. If you preview your course you should see your text in your course and that part of your text will now be a blue hyperlink.

If you click on that link it will then pop open your document that you attached to that link.

Just follow the same steps to attach other types of documents to your Unison eLearning courses.

If you have any other questions about this process or still need help please feel free to leave a comment below or contact support at support@rapidintake.com

Watch the video below to see how an attachment is made in Unison.

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