🗃️Collect: Inspiration & Custom Products

Learn the main features of Canoa, how-to navigate Canvas, gather your design and product inspiration, as well as how to create custom products to design with.

Who would benefit from this training?

• Commercial Interior Designer, Residential Interior Designer, Furniture Dealer Ancillary Designer, Furniture Dealer Sales/Coordinators, Brand Designer, Brand Marketing, Brand Sales

Step 1: Open the Canvas for this Training

Collect: Inspiration & Custom Products 👈

This "Training Canvas" is in Preview/Viewer mode to all users - If you’d like to edit this Canvas, duplicate the Canvas and edit the duplicated version.

• Use the Training Canvas to follow along as you learn the basic functions and create mood boards and presentations of your own.

• Helpful Tip: Have access to multiple tabs and/or screens? Make the most of your training session with Canoa University open on one monitor (referring to the Syllabus with helpful articles and the Training Checklist), and the Training Canvas open on the other.

Step 2: Syllabus

You now have your very own teaching assistant and guided support along side the Training Canvas. Below are helpful articles and videos that will help you along the way.

*Also search for articles in the AI Search Bar above

All about Canvas

• Canvas

  • Canvas Basics Guide & Navigating around the Canvas

• Gathering Inspiration

  • Adding in Images

  • Adding in URL links to Canvas

  • Connect your Pinterest

  • Overview of the Public Catalog

    • How to bring in products to your Canvas

      • How to use Canoa AI

    • Create Custom Products

    • How to edit/manage custom products in Canvas

      • Categories = temporary placeholder 2D drawings

        • Single sku product card vs. Multiple skus in one product card

• How to share products in Canvas

  • Sharing links, inviting collaborators, and embedding

Create, Enrich, and Share data in My Catalog

• My Catalog - An Overview

  • My Catalog is a visual database of your entire product library. Here you can see what other accounts have shared, and it's the place to create kits and collections of your own. And it is the best place to organize product data.
  • The place for bringing in small groups of products and duplicating products from your Catalog or Canoa's Public Product Library.

• How to create products in My Catalog

  • Individually

  • Duplicating products that have been shared - Enrich data for ROM and spec development

    • Pro = edit existing products to your liking

    • Con = the product is no longer synced to account managed live data

• How to edit products in My Catalog

  • Importance of data formatting

    • Tags for organizing

• How to share from My Catalog

Create, Enrich, and Share data in Catalog Pro

• My Catalog Table view - An Overview

  • My Catalog's Table view is a dashboard that focuses on your custom product data. Add tons of new products at once and maintain data in bulk here. Best place for bulk actions - importing, editing, and exporting .CSV files.

  • This method is perfect for large, very large spreadsheets of product information. Create and manage 1000s of products in minutes using Catalog Pro. Utilize the videos in the Canoa Learning & Support center during this part of the session.

• How to create products in bulk

  • Import, edit, and export products in bulk with a .CSV file

    • Data formatting best practices* and Product IDs <- reference the Product Data Template linked below :)

• The in's and out's of Table View

  • Navigation overview
  • Individually create a product
  • Selecting your hero image

  • Drawing editor

  • Creating your own View

  • Using the Filter tool

Step 3: Training Check List

Make sure to practice all of the important topics by following this checklist:

• Create a New Canvas

  • Either select a Blank Canvas or Choose one of our Templates

• Import your Files

  • Using the Import button, select a file type to bring into your Canvas

  • Link you Pinterest account and bring over some pins

• Gather your Inspiration. Add images & products to your Canvas using the following methods:

  • Drag & drop from your desktop

  • Copy-paste images

  • Copy-paste URLs

  • Drag & drop products from the Canoa Public Catalog

    • Toggle amongst the different views: Card, Drawing and Image

  • Copy-paste from existing one of our Designer Templates
• Test our AI recommendation engine

• Create a custom product in Canvas from an image you brought in:

  • Bring in a product from your favorite website via copy pasting the URL into Canvas

  • Use the Save as Product button

  • Enrich data by adding in product details (some of the info will be auto populated from the URL)

• Upload data into My Catalog:

  • Use the Create Product button to create at least 2 products manually

  • Use the Product Data Template (Airtable version here) to bulk upload a minimum of 5 products (Bring as many products as you'd like)

    • Review how your data appears in My Catalog Gallery and Table views

  • Journal your experience

    • Did your data upload and appear in My Catalog?

      • Did you receive the email notification?

    • Did you encounter any errors when uploading your data?

      • If so, what errors? Do you know why there were errors?

    • Did you add Tags and a Subcategory?

• Click on an uploaded product in My Catalog:

  • Does the product data appear correctly in the product card view?

  • Did an image or multiple images upload? How do the images look?

  • Did a Drawing upload? How does the Drawing look?

  • Duplicate a shared product and enrich it's data with your own data

Video Recording & Transcript:

• Sent directly to you at the conclusion of your training session. Contact [e-mail] if you haven't received this.

Resources:

📋 Training Canvas - Collect: Inspiration & Custom Products

🖼️ Templates - Sample Templates linked here

📊 Product Data Template - for bulk imports and formatting in Excel / GoogleSheets

📊 Product Data Airtable - for bulk imports and formatting in Airtable