This Adobe Captivate Widget was created based on a request in the Adobe Forum – http://forums.adobe.com/thread/535691?tstart=0
This widget will allow you to send an email in the background to a predefined address. It will send an email once the widget is “played” on the Captivate timeline.
It will send an email with the subject “Mail sent from Captivate e-mail Widget” and it will send you the users name. (of course the user needs to enter his name in Captivate).
It relies on the widely available CGI / Perl script FormMail (www.formmail.com). This is a free open source script that is pre-installed on many webhosts.
If you don’t have this installed on your webserver you can install it yourself by following the instructions located here: http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html
The widget has two paramenters that needs to be set.
- THe recipient email address. The default settings in the FormMail script dictates that this must be an email on the same domain as from the the script is exectuted. In other words – if I use the widget in an Adobe Captivate project located on my domain www.cpguru.com it can only send emails to xxx@cpguru.com.This functionality can be changed in the FormMail settings if needed so you can define more allowed domains to send email to.
- The location of the FormMail script on your webserver. The location is usually something like http://www.domain.com/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl but that depends on how and where your Webhost installed it (if it’s preinstalled) or where you installed it yourself. Also keep in mind that cpguru.com and www.cpguru.com are technically two separate domains so make sure you have the correct path for your own domain.
How to use the Email Widget for Adobe Captivate:
First of all ensure that you have FormMail installed on your Webserver and that it is working.
The only requirements that the widget have is the two parameters mentioned above and a variable called v_email that needs to be set in Captivate.
Process in Captivate:
- Create a user defined variable called v_email
- Create a Text Entry Box and associate the v_email variable with that.
- Insert the widget in Captivate anywhere after the Text Entry Box.
- Define the two parameters in the Widget Parameters Tab
- That’s it.
Now you will receive an email everytime someone accesses your Captivate course. The email will contain the following information:
Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
() on Friday, December 18, 2009 at 10:37:38
—————————————————————————
userID: Michael
—————————————————————————
In case you do not recieve an email then chances are that the error is with the FormMail script (or the link to the location of the script). I cannot provide support on anything FormMail related so I recommend that you look at http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html where everything in regards to the FormMail script is described in detail.
Download the Email Widget:
Here is the link to download the widget.
AS2 E-mail Widget for Adobe Captivate (1547 downloads)The download package also contains a sample Captivate project. The FormMail script is not supplied due to license restrictions, but you can download it yourself for free on http://www.formmail.com/
Please note – the widget is supplied as is. The widget worked flawlessly in all my tests, but this is no guarantee that it will work for you.
8 Comments
Michael,
The widget works well except that I only receive an “undefined” for the UserID. I’ve made to sure assign v_Name to the TEB. In fact, I used your Cp project file and just changed the widget parameters (location of script and email address). Any ideas what’s causing this?
After some thorough testing with the email widget, I realized that the “v_email” variable worked for me but not “v_Name”. That’s when I was getting the userID as “undefined”. Michael any thoughts about this?
I also found out that if your domain is listed as “domain.com” in your FormMail script, then you probably should not add the www prefix since the widget may not work correctly (even though technically it’s correct). At least it didn’t for me until I got rid of it…
Aah my bad. I actually wrote v_Name and it should of course have been v_email. I will update the post here so there is no confusion. The widget properties does state that you should use the v_email variable, but of course when the post says otherwise then it’s confusing.
In regards to the domainn that is correct. Actually http://www.cpguru.com and cpguru.com are two separate domains so you should always use the correct format. Most hosts have it set up so cpguru.com will automatically open http://www.cpguru.com, but sometimes this is not done automatically.
/Michael
Is it possible for the email widget to pull quiz results and input into the text field of the widget?
What would you recommend?
Thanks,
Gabe
Hi Gabe,
What do you mean with “the text field of the widget”?
Are you looking for a modification so it sends the quiz score in the email as well?
/Michael
Hi Michael,
That is correct. Using the Captivate email function, the end user is promopted with a security warning.
Until we can purchase a licensed LMS, we would like the results to be sent to us via-email – and wanted to know if the widget would be able to pull the quiz results and allow the end user to send from the widget.
Thanks for your prompt response.
Gabe
Hi Gabe,
It will be possible to pull out the final quiz score (the percentage) and any other data that is available in the system variables in Captivate.
Take a look here: https://www.cpguru.com/2009/04/28/system-variables-in-captivate-4-%e2%80%93-a-complete-list/. Basically all variables under “quizzing” can be included in the email sent to you.
I recommend that you try out the widget as it is right now and ensure that this will work for you. Once you have verified this then send me an email through my site and we can work out the customizations.
/Michael
Thanks Michael! I will be testing this next week. Keep you posted!