A blank canvas is freeing, but sometimes you would rather start with structure already in place. Templates give you a ready-made canvas as a starting point, filled with believable example content, so you can begin from something shaped roughly like what you need and adapt it, instead of building every diagram from nothing.
Starting from a Template
When you create a new canvas, the New Canvas wizard asks what you are making: pick a mode (Diagram, Draw or Workshop) and the canvas is made there and then, saved where new canvases go (see Default Folders). The empty tab then opens on that mode's start, Start Diagramming, Start Drawing or Start a Workshop: its Recommended templates first, then every template of that mode in groups beside them, with a search. Click a template and the tab fills with it; from there it is an ordinary canvas, to move, edit, add to and delete from as on any canvas.
Every new tab, and every tab you empty, offers the same start. Close it with its × to begin from a blank canvas; while the tab is still empty, Show Templates in the strip under the palette brings it back. Picked the wrong mode? The mode switch at the top of the start's list changes it while the tab is empty. In Draw the start is Start Drawing, with the pen already in hand, and since Draw has a dock rather than the palette, Show Templates sits in a pill at the top of the canvas.
The search at the top of a start looks in every mode, not just the tab's own. Type "sailboat" on Start Drawing and the Sailboat retrospective turns up under In Other Modes, in a Workshop block, its card saying Opens in Workshop: click it and the tab switches to Workshop with the template on it. Each mode shows up to six matches, with Show All for the rest, and pressing the down arrow in the search box takes you to the first card it found.
What's in the Catalogue
The templates are grouped by the job you are doing, in nine categories listed in alphabetical order, and a start skips a category that has nothing in it. A template lives in one category, and a few also appear in another where you would naturally look for them (a Metric Tree is under both Org Charts and Strategy), so they are listed under each:
| Category | Templates | Also shown here |
|---|---|---|
| Brainstorm | Mind Map, Tree Mind Map, Bubble Map, Sketchnote, Idea Garden, Affinity Map, Crazy 8s, Doodle Warm-Up | |
| Design | Paper Prototype, User Journey, Journey Doodle, User Persona, Empathy Map, User Story Map, Service Blueprint, Comic Strip | Sitemap, Crazy 8s, Affinity Map, Value Proposition Canvas |
| Flowcharts | Flowchart, Swimlane Flowchart, Decision Tree, Approval Workflow, Data Flow Diagram | Service Blueprint, Value Stream Map |
| Workshops | Meeting Agenda, Workshop Board, Brainstorm Board, Lean Coffee and Town Hall Q&A, Retrospective, Start, Stop, Continue, Mad, Sad, Glad, 4Ls Retrospective, Sailboat Retrospective, Pre-Mortem | Crazy 8s, Doodle Warm-Up, Event Storming, Incident Postmortem |
| Org Charts | Org Chart, Pyramid, OKR Tree, Sitemap, Opportunity Solution Tree, Metric Tree, Family Tree | RACI Matrix |
| Quizzes & Games | Pub Quiz, Icebreaker Questions, Two Truths and a Lie, Would You Rather, Find Someone Who Bingo | Doodle Warm-Up |
| Strategy | SWOT, Business Model Canvas, Prioritization Matrix, Risk Matrix, Fishbone, Venn Diagram, Flywheel, Funnel, Sankey Diagram, Comparison Table, Stakeholder Map, Rich Picture, Wardley Map, Value Proposition Canvas | OKR Tree, Roadmap, Pre-Mortem, Metric Tree |
| Technical | System Architecture, Cloud Architecture, Database Schema, Sequence Diagram, Class Diagram, State Machine, Event Storming, Incident Postmortem, Threat Model, Value Stream Map | Data Flow Diagram |
| Timelines | Timeline, Horizontal Milestone Timeline, Vertical Milestone Timeline, Gantt Chart, Roadmap, Objectives Planner, RACI Matrix |
Search templates... finds a template by its name, its description, its category, or the everyday words people use for it: try "1:1", "retro", "erd", "vsm" or "persona". Every word you type has to match.
Three blanks lead the Popular shelf, one for each way of working, and sit apart from the categories since starting from nothing is not a kind of diagram: Blank Diagram (an empty canvas), Blank Whiteboard (a board in Draw mode for free drawing without distractions) and Blank Workshop (an empty tab in Workshop mode, to run a retro, town hall or workshop with timers, votes and polls to hand). After the blanks, Popular shows a few of the templates most people start from; choose a mode and Popular changes to that mode's favourites, its blank first.
Finding Templates for a Mode
Every template opens in one mode: Diagram, Draw or Workshop, and each mode's start lists its own. To browse another mode's, switch the tab's mode with the switch at the top of the start's list while the tab is empty, or just search: a template from another mode shows which mode it opens in.
- Draw templates are drawn by hand, ready to draw over: Sketchnote, Rich Picture, Comic Strip, Doodle Warm-Up, Paper Prototype, Journey Doodle, Pre-Mortem and Idea Garden.
- Workshop templates are sessions to run with your team: Blank Workshop, Retrospective, Start, Stop, Continue, Mad, Sad, Glad, 4Ls Retrospective, Sailboat Retrospective, Town Hall Q&A, Lean Coffee, Crazy 8s, the quizzes and games (Pub Quiz, Icebreaker Questions, Two Truths and a Lie, Would You Rather and Find Someone Who Bingo), the spaces to walk round together in Avatar mode (Virtual Office, Coworking Space, Team Pod and All-Hands Hall; see Virtual Office), Meeting Agenda, Workshop Board, Brainstorm Board, the boards that come with a dot vote, Affinity Map, Prioritization Matrix, Risk Matrix and Value Proposition Canvas, and the sticky-note boards a group fills in together, such as SWOT, Empathy Map and User Journey. See Workshop Mode.
- Every other template is a Diagram template.
Each one arrives as real elements rather than a picture: a Gantt chart's bars are shapes you drag, a mind map's branches are nodes you can rearrange. Nothing in a template is locked or special.
Changing the Theme
A new canvas starts on the Default theme, and a template picked on a start takes the tab's current theme. Once you are on the canvas, click the Theme & canvas button in the bottom-right corner to open the Tab Style dialog and try a different theme: it recolours the whole template at once.
Making It Your Own
A template is just a head start, not a constraint. Everything in it is fully editable: rename and recolour the elements, restyle the whole thing with a different theme, or strip out the parts you do not need. Because the canvas works the same as any other, you can also add tabs, invite others, and share it once you have shaped it into what you want.
Templates pair naturally with themes: pick a layout that fits your content, then try a few themes from the Tab Style dialog to find the look you want. Double-click a theme to apply it and close the dialog in one go.
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