Is this the right place for this post?

@acotgreave - I like this theory. As static Tableau images, I could manipulate the elements even further so that there are three layers: two of the Tableau graph preview images sandwiching the icon image in z-space. That way, the semi-transparent "top" Tableau image will not appear to lose any opacity and still afford the icon image visibility when made 80% transparent.

However, this theory removes interactivity from the picture. There would be no hover or click feedback or tooltip information—which is preferred (but not mandatory)—for these tiny charts. Printed marker labels would remedy the info visibility aspect though, which is easy enough to do in Tableau.

Nevertheless, would you be able to share a link or some steps on how to leverage the static image version of my Tableau in case I decide to go this route?

@myself - I tried researching the ability of jQuery to be able to pass click/hover mouse events through an HTML element (the icon image in this case), when the overlay element is positioned on top of an iframe (in this case the iframe would hold the interactive Tableau graph). However, this issues with these methods get compounded further since I do not have access to the contents of the iframe (cross-domain limitations).

@James Baker - I think I understand. You are saying that the top/bottom data values need to be static or fixed, and congruent to how I configure the background-image ranges in Tableau. This data would be updated monthly though, which as you say, would not allow the background-image to work correctly once new data was added.

However, if I were to put aside the flexibility of allowing new data each month (and manually adjusting it each time), what would the bg-image settings, joins, and Excel documents need to look like to achieve this as a one-time graph? Hypothetically, of course..

If you have the power to move this thread to the right place, by all means. Sorry I didn't peg it in the right category the first time.

James, I've tried my best but cannot manipulate my data or configurations to get close to what I want - either it works and the data is disappears, or the data works, but the background image is invalid. Any chance anyone here can physically help given the documents attached, and the goal images in the original post? Keeping in mind we only have Tableau Public.

I would greatly appreciate. This could even go on as a general proof-of-concept for Tableau how-tos!

Ah ha! Someone was able to do exactly what I want! This week's Most Beautiful hockey graph employs a custom background image that is not a map, and uses arbitrary axis values.

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/NHLCareerPointsLeaders/AnatomyofanOutlier?:embed=yes&:toolbar=yes&:tabs=no

With any luck I can reverse engineer this to match my data and layout :)

The workbook I'm trying to work with is the "Mini" series of worksheets here: http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/BMD-Social-Media-Activity/Mini-Social-With-Legend

I noticed that the hockey viz uses fixed axes, yes, but it also has continuous values (green), and our values are discrete (blue), and not numbers (they are dates). So I still can't seem to get it to map because one of our axes are discrete Date types.

I suppose changing the data type in the source Excel doc to numbers representing each month, then creating a number-to-text calculation afterwards in Tableau may work...

What do you think?

Richard,

Can't seem to open your attachment in Tableau - after downloading and opening, it continues to say "Tableau will open the latest version of this" which is the original, not the one you edited...

Any way you could publish this under a different name online? Will that work?

I'm using Tableau Public 6.1. Thanks.

Total success! Thank you so much Richard for the winning configuration :)

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/BMD-Social-Media-Activity/Mini-Social-With-Legend

Problem: solved.