Canvas
The canvas is the heart of Roadmap Flow. It is the roadmap itself, drawn the way an audience will see it, and it stays visible no matter which tab you are in.
What it does
The canvas renders your roadmap in three layouts, switched from the canvas header:
One row per workstream, items as cards.
Best for showing how work splits across areas of the product.
Kanban columns by status.
Best for showing where work stands.
Lanes by workstream across a calendar, in Weeks, Months or Quarters.
Best for showing when.
A detail switcher (All details / Brief / Summary) controls how much each card shows, so the same roadmap can be dense for working or clean for presenting. A separate Comfortable / Dense control decides how much room each card takes; Dense is the default and drops the description to the detail panel. The filter bar and the status legend chips narrow what is shown without changing the roadmap itself.
Items are rows when there is room
On a wide screen a Stream item lays itself out as a single line — level, type, status, reference and title, with its period, owner and confidence on the right — and a nested workstream reads as one list with a thin line between rows. Make the window narrower and each item folds back into a card, because three lines of content need the room. Items inside Timeline and Board columns are always cards: a column is too narrow for a row.
Getting around the Timeline
The Timeline scrolls in two directions, so it has controls the other layouts do not need:
- The period header stays pinned to the top and the workstream names to the left, so neither kind of scrolling loses your bearings.
- Weeks / Months / Quarters each show how many columns they would produce before you pick one. − and + make columns narrower or wider, and Fit sizes the whole roadmap to the window. Whatever you were looking at stays on screen: scrolled to July in Months, you land on Q3 in Quarters.
- Today is marked with a red line, and the Today button brings it back into view when you have scrolled away.
- Full screen gives the Timeline and its controls the whole window.
- If you scroll into a stretch with nothing in it, the Timeline says how many items lie either side and offers to take you to the nearest.
An item with no start or target period cannot be placed on a calendar and does not appear here — it is still on Stream and Board. If an initiative has no dates of its own but the items under it do, choosing Showing: Initiatives spans it across the period those items occupy and marks the span with a ~, so you can see it was worked out rather than chosen by you.
When to use it
- Whenever you are shaping, reading, or presenting the roadmap.
- When you want to see structure — how items group, sequence, and relate.
- Live in a review: switch layout and detail level as the conversation moves.
When not to use it
- When you need to find one specific item fast, or work down a long list — the Items tab is quicker for that.
- When you want to check roadmap quality — that is the Check tab.
3-minute flow
- Open the app; the canvas is already there.
- Use the header to switch between Stream, Board, and Timeline.
- Set the detail level to match your audience.
- Click any card to open its detail panel; the canvas stays visible.
- Use the filter bar or status chips to focus on a slice.
Best use cases
- Presenting the roadmap in a review.
- Sanity-checking structure after a round of edits.
- Reframing the same roadmap — by area, by state, by time — in one conversation.
Common mistakes
- Presenting in All details to an executive audience. Use Summary.
- Forgetting that active filters carry into exports. Clear filters you did not mean to apply.
- Reading Timeline Months mode as a delivery schedule. It only reflects the periods you set on items.
- Assuming the Timeline is empty when it is only scrolled somewhere empty. Use Fit, or Today, to get back to where the roadmap actually is.
Related guide pages
Availability
Free. Available on every plan.