Getting Started

This guide walks you through the core steps to get your team up and running in CE Canvas — from logging in to creating your first engagement project. Ten minutes here saves your team the most common setup mistakes: working in projects nobody else can see, and starting engagement design before the decision space is captured.

1. Log in

Navigate to your CE Canvas URL and sign in with your email address and password — or, if your organisation uses single sign-on, with your work account.

If you haven’t received an invitation yet, ask your organisation owner to invite you from Organisation Settings → Users. If your organisation uses SSO, see Single Sign-On.

2. Your dashboard

After logging in you land on the organisation dashboard. The project you last worked in sits at the top as the command centre — with live vital signs (current phase, next milestone, your open tasks) that each link to where you act on them. Below it: your other projects, your upcoming tasks, and upcoming milestones across the organisation.

This layout is deliberate: the dashboard answers “where was I, and what needs me next?” before you’ve clicked anything. Projects without a photo show a civic scene illustration — the same scene family appears on the project’s thumbnail and its home page, so projects stay recognisable.

3. Invite your team

Before creating projects, add your team members so they can be assigned to projects and tasks.

1. Go to Organisation Settings (bottom-left sidebar)
2. Select Users from the settings menu
3. Click Invite Member

In the invite modal, enter the person’s email address and assign them a role — Admin or Member.

The invited person receives an email to create their account.

Why this order matters: projects created before the team exists tend to accumulate unassigned work. Adding people first means every task can have an owner from day one.

4. Create your first project

From the dashboard, click New project.

Fill in the project details:

• Title — the name of your engagement project
• Workflow template — optional; apply a Playbook to generate common tasks and timing for this project type. You can add or change it later from Project Home.
• Description — a brief description of the project
• Status — start as Draft while you’re setting up; switch to Active when engagement begins

The project slug (URL) and project code (task prefix) are set automatically on creation. You can adjust them later under Advanced settings in Project Settings.

5. Your project home

Once created, the project opens on Project Home — the project’s identity page and the place CE Canvas always tells you the single next useful action.

Three things to notice:

• The hero carries one primary action — it changes as the project progresses (Continue Project Context → Continue canvas → Generate your workplan). If you only ever click that one button, you’ll move through setup in the right order.
• Vital-sign chips under the action show the project pulse — current phase, next milestone (flagged when overdue), open tasks, and canvas progress. Each chip links to the surface where you act on it.
• The sidebar is the project journey — Planning (with Context, Canvas, and Plan beneath it), Delivery, Results, Reporting, Close & Learn. Tasks sits above the journey as a persistent item, not a step you pass through. The current stop is highlighted. The journey is orientation, not a gate: every stop is always available.

Your first stop is Project Context — starting with a one-question classification: can stakeholders influence substantive decisions on this project? Answer it before anything else; it shapes the planning approach, canvas, and guidance for the whole project.

6. Managing tasks

CE Canvas includes a cross-project view under My Tasks, and each project has its own Tasks surface — a persistent item above the journey rail.

Tasks can be grouped by phase, filtered by assignee, type, priority, activity, or project, and viewed as a Board, List, or Timeframe. See Tasks.

7. Using EVA

EVA is CE Canvas’s engagement advisor, available throughout the platform. Open it with Ask EVA in the top navigation, or use the inline Draft with EVA actions that appear on context fields, canvas sections, and documents.

EVA can help with:

• Drafting context, canvas sections, and plan documents from your uploaded materials
• Stakeholder identification and analysis
• Method selection and IAP2 guidance
• Suggesting delivery tasks for engagement activities
• Analysing engagement results into themes, sentiment, and evidence

EVA is a tool to support your expertise — always review what it generates. See Responsible Use of AI.

Next steps

• Work through the Engagement Sequence Overview — the thinking behind the journey
• Open Project Context and classify your project
• Read Roles and Permissions to understand what each role can do