The Overlay option in the Topic Editor exports all of the screenshots in a topic to Microsoft PowerPoint, creating a slide for each frame. After exporting the topic, you can use the graphic and drawing tools in Microsoft PowerPoint and the tools on a custom Overlay Editor tab to address a number of content development challenges by making changes to the topic screenshots.
Enhance a screenshot
When you record a topic, the Recorder captures the screenshot and action area for the frame. To add further value to your topic, you may want to enhance frame screenshots with callouts or drawing objects. You can do this by editing single frames in a graphics editor or by exporting the entire topic to Microsoft PowerPoint and using the drawing tools in that application.
Application change management
As applications change, recorded content also needs to be updated. For extensive changes, re-recording is the best solution, but not always practical because you may not have access to the application, you cannot set up the data as it was originally recorded, or the task is too time-consuming.
Where application updates are minor, editing the underlying screenshot is often the faster solution. However, editing each individual screenshot in a graphics editor would also be time-consuming and difficult to apply the change uniformly to each screenshot.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint, you can insert a graphic image of the updated screen as an overlay and apply the overlay to multiple slides. This means that you can add the same change to screenshots that appear in multiple or all topic frames.
Mask information
Overlays provide a solution for masking sensitive information such as customer, personal, or confidential material, and hiding branding points that were captured during the initial recording process. Masking replaces the data that appears on the screen so that it is not visible to the user. Another problem often encountered is a topic recorded in a test environment with unrealistic data. You may want to replace this test data with more realistic examples without re-recording.
Create prototypes
You can use overlays to create prototypes showing what the modifications to an application would look like. Using Microsoft PowerPoint tools such as the Developer tab (or ribbon), you can add design a form by adding controls to represent field labels, text boxes, command buttons, check boxes, option buttons, combo boxes, list boxes, and so on.
Add conceptual information frames
You can add specially designed blank Explanation frames in the Topic Editor for the purpose of adding conceptual information to those frames. You can convey this information using Microsoft PowerPoint text tools such as bulleted and numbered lists; charts to display numerical, process, and hierarchical information; and images such as pictures and clip-art.