How to Build a Variables Dashboard for Faster Storyline Testing

You finish wiring up a course with many variables and then realize you have to test slide 20. That means clicking through every screen just to get there. A variables dashboard makes that problem disappear.

Let’s look at how to set that up.

How variables work

Working with variables is a three-step process.

• You create the variable
• You adjust its value with a trigger
• You use that value to do something.

The challenge with testing a course and reviewing it is getting the variables to the right value first. Without a dashboard, you have to go through all the steps in the course manually. That gets old fast when you have a dozen variables in a single course.

A dashboard where you can change them quickly for testing works really well.

What a variables dashboard is

A variables dashboard is a lightbox slide you attach to the player. It’s available anywhere in the course while you’re testing. From it, you can manually flip variables to true or false, enter text values, and adjust number counts.

Think of it as a cheat panel for testing. You set the variables to whatever state you need, then jump to the slide you want to test. No more clicking through twenty screens just to trigger one condition.

How to build one

Building the dashboard takes a bit of setup, but it pays off quickly on any complex course. The slide needs controls for every variable type you’re tracking. Once it’s built, you attach it to the player as a lightbox and it’s accessible from anywhere.

Here’s the setup:

• Create a slide that shows the current value of each variable and includes controls to change them.
• Use toggle buttons for true/false variables, text input boxes for text variables, and increment buttons for number variables.
• Add this slide to the player as a lightbox slide. That keeps it persistent and available throughout the course.
• Before publishing the final version, remove the lightbox link so learners can’t access it.

The controls you build should match the types of variables in your course. The more variables your course has, the more time this setup saves.

Here’s an example where you can set variables and test them on slide without going through the entire course.

See the example dashboard

If you want to see how it was built, watch this tutorial.

Why this approach works better than text references alone

Adding a text reference to show a variable’s current value is a solid testing habit. But text references are read-only. A variables dashboard lets you read and write. You can see current values and change them without touching the trigger panel or starting at slide one and going through the entire interaction.

For courses with interdependent variables, that matters. You might need one variable true and another false at the same time to test a specific branch. Getting there manually could take ten minutes. With a dashboard, it takes seconds.

Watch the tutorial to see a full walkthrough of a variables dashboard built for a gamification course. You can also test a live demo to see the set-variables panel in action.

Key takeaways

The variables dashboard points toward a broader habit. Build courses that are easy to test, not just easy to publish. As projects get more complex, having a systematic way to control variable states saves hours of debugging. Consider building a reusable dashboard template you can drop into any new Storyline project from the start.