Engagement How To: Let the user act in the app, then proceed to next engagement step

Related products: PX Engagements

I often interspersed a modal like this in the walk through tool my company used prior to shifting to PX:





The users could do whatever they needed on the page, and the modal would persist in a corner of the screen despite minor url changes. When they clicked "Next," the next step would appear.





(The (?) spots reveal explainer tooltip text on mouseover--just regular html stuff that we can do in PX too)





WHY IS IT USEFUL





This technique worked well in cases where a user may need to take any number of steps (or no steps if already ready) before moving on to the next part of a process. It's the digital analog to a tour guide saying, "get some snacks, hit up the restrooms, meet back at the bus in ten minutes."





Does this make sense and has anyone found a good way to handle this kind of function in PX?



I guess I'm looking to toggle on ability to interact with the app in the background of a "dialogue step" modal (and I'll position that dialogue to the edge of the screen). Is turning on and off the interactivity of the underlying app possible?




Thanks for your feedback/ idea Mike, appreciate it.





fyi: @ciarapeter / @mickey




Thanks for the idea, @mikewohlwend ! Have you tried the Knowledge Center for this? If so, what did / didn't work about it?




Hi @ciarapeter,





Thanks for asking--I have looked through the Knowledge Center and don't see the ability to toggle app interactivity. The interactivity states seem to be entirely based on use of modal only or highlight plus modal:







  • modal with non-interactive app background





  • modal plus highlighting an area of the app which is active*



I haven't been able to figure out how to create a modal that asks the user to take actions in the app (like a series of actions based on their need) and click next when done. This modal would need to persist through page reloads and ideally URL changes--waiting for the user to say they are done and ready for the next step.





A toggle would be ideal, because it would also be ideal to sometimes highlight an area but not invite interaction in that area that could break the flow. The presence of a Next button in the modal would end up being the user's cue as to where to click to continue.





*I noticed that if you scroll, the active highlight area stays absolutely positioned on the screen, and can make any underlying area of the app active--a different problem there, unless it only works like that in preview mode!




Makes sense. Thanks @mikewohlwend !




Moving to PX Ideas for better tracking and so others can vote for this request if they like!