Your first canvas

This tutorial takes about ten minutes. You’ll create a workspace, sketch a small experiment on its canvas, and see the same work as a plan.

1. Create a workspace

1. In the sidebar, open Explorer.
2. Choose Create workspace, enter a Workspace name (for example “Buffer optimization”) and select Create.

You’re the workspace’s Owner. Sauriq opens it as your active workspace, and it already has one canvas and one plan.

2. Open the canvas

Select Plans in the sidebar, open the workspace’s plan, then select its Canvas tab. The canvas starts empty.

This tutorial builds the canvas by hand. To start faster later, an empty canvas also offers Quick build: describe your objective and experiments, attach your own files, links or protocols, preview the result, and select Build canvas. It adds the nodes and their plan items in one step. Dates are optional.

Each background or experiment section accepts up to 20 files. Quick build waits for uploads to finish before you can preview or close the form. Uploaded files stay in the workspace even if you cancel the build.

To move around:

• Scroll to zoom.
• Drag the background to pan.
• Drag a node to move it. Positions are saved for everyone in the workspace.

3. Add your first node

1. Right-click an empty part of the canvas and choose Create New Node.
2. Pick a node type. Start with Objective: the question the experiment answers.

Each node type has a job. Activity is work someone does, Material is something you use or produce, Decision branches the flow, and Milestone marks a checkpoint. Note is free text and can’t be connected.

4. Connect a second node

1. Right-click the objective and choose Create Connected Node.
2. Pick Activity.

Sauriq places the new node and draws a link from the objective to it. Links run from one node to the next and show the order of the work. Add another activity connected to the first one, so you have a short chain.

5. Add tasks to an activity

1. Right-click an activity and choose Edit node.
2. Add a Task Board and enter a task or two. Give one an assignee and dates.
3. Select Save. Changes in the editor aren’t saved until you do.

6. See the same work in other views

Select the plan’s Table tab to see your tasks as rows.

The tasks you added on the canvas are already in the plan. Every canvas has exactly one plan behind it. Change a task’s dates or status in the plan and the canvas shows the change, and the other way round.

Switch to the Gantt tab to see the tasks on a timeline. Kanban groups them by status, and Calendar shows them by date. Use Canvas to return to your experiment map.

If Gantt cannot load team schedules, it shows a warning and shades weekends only. Switch to another tab and reopen Gantt to retry. The warning clears when schedules load.

Where to go from here

• Invite colleagues to the workspace from its Members list. You need to be an Owner or Manager to do that, and they need to be in your institution already (Getting access).
• Look up any term you’re unsure of in the glossary.
• On any screen, Help → Page help explains what you’re looking at.