The Easiest Instructional Overlay Ever (Credit Zach Bowders)

        

I often create collapsing instructional menus that show users how to read my dashboards. I tend to build these in PowerPoint, by exporting an image of the dashboard out of Tableau, adding in a bunch of information in PowerPoint, exporting that image, then bringing it in as an image in Tableau. In fact, here is a great blog post from Heidi Kalbe showing exactly how to do this.

But recently, David Kelly told me about a Zach Bowders trick that makes this wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy easier. (Yeah, 16 y's...that's how much easier this is). Check out the short video below to see how to do this and check out Zach's template on Tableau Public showing an example (just click "View Overlay").

And that's it! What a great technique!  Thanks for reading...and watching!

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Kevin Flerlage, October 6, 2025

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