Attach a canvas

A task can show data in two ways, each on a tab under its description:

• Canvas: a link to a shared canvas, so the dashboard for a piece of work sits right beside the work itself. Many tasks can link the same canvas, each filtered to its own slice of data.
• Widgets: widgets that belong to this task alone, for a chart or table that only makes sense here.

The tabs sit beside Files, and they start folded when a task opens: click a tab, or the chevron at the end of their row, to unfold it. Each tab's buttons sit at the right end of that row. You set either on the task after it exists, not while creating it. A task is not linked to an individual data record directly; its connection to your data runs through the canvas and the context you preset on it.

Link a task to a canvas

1. Open the task from the Tasks list.
2. Click the Canvas tab under the description. Until a canvas is linked it reads No canvas selected yet.
3. Click the tab's + (Add canvas), then use Search canvas... to find a canvas.
4. Select the canvas. If it has context variables, set them in the next step (below) and click Confirm.

Once linked, the tab is named after the canvas, for example Canvas (Portfolio Overview), and shows the canvas's widgets. Its pencil (Change canvas) picks a different canvas, or No canvas at the top of the list to unlink it, and its arrow (Open canvas) opens the canvas on its own page.

A task links the canvas itself, not a copy: edit the canvas on its own page and every task that links it shows the change. That is also how a workflow's tasks work, all linking the one canvas it names. A canvas that is archived, or that belongs to a space or to another task's own widgets, can't be linked.

Connect it to data through context

If the chosen canvas defines context variables, you can preset them so the canvas opens already focused on this task's data:

1. When you pick the canvas, the picker's second step, Configure context, lists the canvas's context variables. Set a value for each, for example a counterparty or a date range, and click Confirm. The back arrow (Back to canvases) returns to the list.
2. On the task, the Canvas tab shows this task's values first, in a line right above the widgets they filter. Use a value's pencil to change it later.

The canvas then filters to those values whenever the task is open, which is how a task stays tied to the right slice of data without a direct record link. Tasks raised by the Exception Framework arrive with these values already set to the share class, sub-fund and dates of their exception.

Give a task its own widgets

The Widgets tab, between Files and Canvas, holds widgets that belong to this task alone. With none yet it reads No widgets yet.

1. Open the task and click the Widgets tab.
2. Click its + (Add widget). The task's widgets open in edit mode, with Discard changes, Add widget and Save and close over them, and the Widgets library opens at the right of the window.
3. Pick a widget from the same library every canvas uses, a table, chart, KPI and so on, or start one with New widget, then click Save and close.

Once the task has widgets, the tab's pencil (Edit widgets) reopens the layout. While the widgets are being edited, the other tabs and the chevron wait until you save or discard.

These widgets are kept on a canvas of the task's own, hidden from the Canvas page, and deleted with the task. Deleting a task never deletes a shared canvas it links.

Where to go next

• Build the canvas first: Build a canvas
• Track the work itself: Create a task