Canva’s Visual Worksuite could help run every aspect of your business

Canva is moving beyond its roots as an online graphic design tool, announcing a new suite of workplace products that expand into other areas of visual communication. The Canva Visual Worksuite will provide design-focused alternatives to products offered by Microsoft and Google, such as Canva Docs and Canva Whiteboards, as well as introduce new features to existing tools within the Canva product family.

First up is Canva Docs, a collaborative online document creator and editing tool, enabling you to use all of Canva’s 100 million-plus library of design assets while creating text documents. You can create and embed designs like whiteboards, banners, and brainstorms directly within the Doc as an alternative to exporting your created designs and then importing them into a service like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. An additional feature called “Docs to Decks” enables you to convert the finished document into a full presentation at the click of a button.

Canva Docs can be used collaboratively across both desktop and mobile, allowing your teammates to work with you in real time while leaving comments and actions. If you don’t want to give absolute freedom, then good news — you can control who has permission to view, comment, or edit the Doc, and Canva Insights can even track interactions and edits to your Canva Doc over time. 

Google isn’t the only company that needs to watch its back — the Australian-based design company 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 will offer hundreds of responsive templates that allow you to create a functional website in minutes with zero coding experience.

You can select a free domain, use an existing domain name or purchase a new domain directly through Canva, and the company states that every website creative through the tool will automatically be fully responsive, optimizing it for every device. You can even add password protection to the sites, allowing you to control who has access or create a private space for you and your team.

Analytics are also available directly through Canva via its Design Insights tool, enabling you to see metrics such as views, traffic, and engagement across websites, social media posts, presentations, documents, or shared designs.

Canva Whiteboards is another new tool being introduced for the Visual Worksuite, which combines existing Canva features together into a brainstorming tool for you and your team. This virtual noticeboard can be used to create mind maps and flow charts, with the creative freedom to include video and audio assets. Quick Flow tools are launching alongside Canva Whiteboards that function like a task management system within diagrams and flowcharts, helping you to stick to schedules with a synced timer and allowing you to find what part of a project someone is working on by clicking on their avatar.

Canva is also expanding its existing Canva Print feature, allowing you to create over 35 different products — from leaflets and flyers to mugs and baby outfits — and have the physical products sent directly to your doorstep. A host of other updates are coming, such as cinematic presentations with new transitions, remote presentation controls, and the launch of Data Visualizations 2.0, which transforms typically boring data into interactive visualizations following its acquisition of Flourish. 

I’m especially excited about a new update that introduces Canva’s popular background remover editing tool to video. The feature works incredibly well on still images and offers greater convenience over opening image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, and now you’ll be able to strip away a background from videos with one click of a button. You can read about these new features over on the Canva website.

Canva isn’t the only company making some significant updates to enterprise tools this week. Zoom has also announced its biggest expansion yet, set to include email and calendar apps, which aim to transform it into a new competitor for Google Workspace and Microsoft Office.