A tooltip is the gentlest format in this collection. It sits at the element it describes and waits, which makes it right for explaining something that isn't obvious without stopping anyone from working.
You add tooltips in the same editor as tours, by opening your product and pointing at the elements they belong to. Each gets a title and its text.
One campaign can carry several tooltips, and they can run as a short sequence — you can set the wording on the next and done buttons, and preview any step while building.
A control whose purpose isn't clear from its label.
A setting with a consequence people don't expect.
A new feature, pointed out where it lives rather than announced elsewhere.
The advantage over a tour is that a tooltip doesn't demand a sequence. Someone reads the one that's in front of them and carries on.
Two or three on a screen is guidance. Eight is a screen wearing annotations, and people stop reading them entirely — including the one that mattered.
Point them at the things people actually get wrong, which your support conversations will tell you, rather than at the things you'd like to highlight.
A tooltip is attached to an element, so a redesign can leave it pointing at nothing or, worse, at something else. Check them after frontend changes — a tooltip explaining the wrong control is more confusing than none at all.
