Layout and organization

Once a canvas has widgets, the last steps are arranging them, choosing how wide the canvas reads, and making sure the right people find it. To add widgets first, see Build a canvas.

Arrange widgets

Arrange a canvas to tell a story: the headline number up top, the trend beside it, the detail below. Layout changes happen in edit mode: open the canvas's ⋯ and choose Edit canvas & context, or press ⌘E. A new canvas opens in edit mode already.

• Move a widget: drag it by its header to a new spot. A widget stays where you drop it, keeping the empty space you leave above it, and the widgets around it only move when it lands on them.
• Resize a widget: drag its edge or corner handle. Widgets snap to the grid so rows and columns stay aligned. A text box only resizes in width; it takes the height of its text.
• Add another widget: click Add widget to open the widget library, or right-click empty space and choose Add new item. You can drag a widget from the library to the exact place you want it, or make a new one.
• Reuse a widget: select it and use Cut (⌘X), Copy (⌘C), Paste (⌘V) or Duplicate (⌘D). Pasting a cut widget moves the same widget; a copy pasted onto the same canvas becomes a new widget, titled with (2).

When the layout looks right, click Save and close. Click Discard changes to leave without saving; if changes are unsaved, a Discard changes? prompt appears first.

On a narrow screen, a row whose widgets would get narrower than their minimum wraps, so the canvas stays readable at any window size.

Width and proportions

Each canvas has a width, saved with it for everyone who opens it:

• Document, a narrow column, like a report page. New canvases start here.
• Wide, a wider reading column.
• Full width, the whole page.

Set it in edit mode with the Width toggle at the left of the edit bar, then save. In view mode, the Width row of the canvas's ⋯ (Document, Wide, Full width) changes it for you alone, until you reload or leave the canvas.

Keep proportions, also in the canvas's ⋯, keeps each widget's shape when the canvas is drawn at another width: a card drawn wider takes more rows, so two half-width charts stay two half-width charts. It matters wherever the canvas shows at a width of its own: another width setting, a Space, a task, or a thread's side panel. Like Width, switching it in view mode applies to you alone and is back to the canvas's own setting after a reload.

Canvases saved before widths existed draw at Wide, with their rows as saved.

Switch between canvases

On a canvas, the Switch canvas icon in the app header, next to the canvas's ⋯, lists the workspace's canvases with a search box. Pick one to open it in this one's place. The same list is the first item of the canvas's ⋯. Canvases that belong to a Space or a task are not listed, and neither are archived ones; open them from their owner or the Canvas page.

Gather canvases into groups

On the Canvas page you can sort canvases into groups, such as one per desk or per reporting cycle.

1. Click Manage groups (the folder icon at the top of the page).
2. Click New group, name it, and Create. Rename or delete a group from its row, and drag the groups into the order the page lists them. Main always comes first.
3. Move a canvas into a group from its card's ⋯, Move to group, or from the Group field of its Rename canvas dialog. The canvas's own ⋯ has Move to group too.

With groups, the Canvas page lists Main first, then each group that holds a canvas (an empty group is not shown), each folding away from the chevron beside its heading; the fold button (Collapse all) collapses or expands them all. Deleting a group moves its canvases to Main; no canvas is deleted. A duplicate lands in its source's group.

How a canvas reaches your team

Canvases are workspace-wide. A canvas you create is visible to every member of the same workspace, so there is no per-canvas share action. Everyone in the workspace can open it from the Canvas page, or from search.

To point a specific team at a canvas, add it to a Space alongside the tasks, data and agents for that use case. To show it to someone outside the workspace, put it in a Space and share the Space. To send it as a document, export it to PDF.

The Canvas page and card menu

The Canvas page lists every canvas as a card with its title, description, when it was last updated and who changed it last. Its header has a search box, Manage groups, a ⋯ with Show archived and Widgets library, and New.

Hover a card and open its ⋯ (or right-click the card) for Open canvas, Open in new tab, Edit canvas & context, Rename, New thread (a thread with the canvas in its context), Duplicate, Move to group, Archive and Delete.

Duplicate a canvas

To start from a canvas you already have, choose Duplicate from its card's ⋯ or from the canvas's own ⋯. The Duplicate canvas dialog offers the title with (copy) and the description; click Duplicate and SPARK builds the copy with its layout and its context variables. SPARK says Canvas duplicated, and the copy is on the Canvas page; you stay on the canvas you were on.

Duplicating needs a clean canvas, so save or discard your changes first: the copy is made from what is stored rather than from what is on your screen.

Archive or delete a canvas

If a canvas is no longer needed, choose Archive from its card's ⋯ or the canvas's own ⋯. Your widgets and layouts stay safe. To bring it back, open the page's ⋯, tick Show archived, and choose Restore from the card's menu.

To remove a canvas for good, choose Delete from its card's ⋯. The confirmation tells you how many tasks are linked to the canvas: those tasks are kept but detached (they simply lose their canvas link), while the canvas and its saved contexts are permanently deleted. Its widgets stay in the library; clean up the ones no canvas uses from there.

Where to go next

• Start a new canvas: Build a canvas
• Reuse and clean up widgets: Widget library
• Group a canvas with its use case: Create a Space