Moving beyond its roots as an online graphic design tool, Canva is announcing a new line of workplace products that expand into other areas of visual communication. The Canva Visual Worksuite provides design-oriented alternatives to products offered by Microsoft and Google, such as Canva Docs and Canva Whiteboards, and introduces new features to existing tools within the Canva product family.
First up is Canva Docs, an online document creation and editing tool that lets you use all of Canva’s more than 100 million library of design assets while creating text documents. You can create and embed designs such as whiteboards, banners, and brainstorms directly into the document as an alternative to exporting your created designs and then importing them into a service such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word. An additional feature called “Docs to Decks” allows you to convert the finished document into a full presentation at the click of a button.
Canva Docs can be used on both desktop and mobile, allowing your teammates to collaborate with you in real time as they leave comments and actions. If you don’t want to give absolute freedom, there’s good news: you can control who has permission to view, comment on, or edit the document, and Canva Insights can even interact and edit your Canva files over time. follow document.
Google isn’t the only company to look back – the Australia-based design firm is also rolling out Canva Websites, an easy-to-use website building tool that could lure users away from other services like Wix or Squarespace. Canva Websites offers hundreds of responsive templates that allow you to create a functional website in minutes without any coding experience.
You can select a free domain, use an existing domain name, or buy a new domain directly through Canva, and the company states that any website ad made through the tool will automatically be fully responsive, optimizing it for any device. You can even add password protection to the sites so you can control who has access or create a private space for you and your team.
Analytics is also available directly from Canva through the Design Insights tool, which allows you to view metrics such as views, traffic and engagement on websites, social media posts, presentations, documents, or designs shared.
Canva Whiteboards is another new tool introduced to the Visual Worksuite, which combines existing Canva features into a brainstorming tool for you and your team. This virtual bulletin board can be used to create mind maps and flowcharts, with the creative freedom to include video and audio assets. Quick Flow tools launch alongside Canva Whiteboards that function as a task management system in diagrams and flowcharts, allowing you to stick to schedules with a synced timer and find out what part of a project someone is working on by clicking their avatar.
Canva is also expanding its existing Canva Print feature so you can create over 35 different products – from flyers and flyers to mugs and baby outfits – and get the physical products shipped straight to your door. Plenty of other updates are on the way, including cinematic presentations with new transitions, remote control for presentations, and the launch of Data Visualizations 2.0, which typically turns boring data into interactive visualizations after the Flourish acquisition.
I’m especially excited about a new update that introduces Canva’s popular video background removal editing tool. The feature works incredibly well on still images and offers more convenience than opening image editing software like Adobe Photoshop, and now you can remove a background from videos with the click of a button. You can read more about these new features on the Canva website.
Canva isn’t the only company to make some significant updates to business tools this week. Zoom has also announced its biggest expansion to date, with email and calendar apps aiming to transform it into a new competitor to Google Workspace and Microsoft Office.