Canvas

Glean Canvas is a co-authoring surface built into Glean. It opens alongside Chat and gives you a dedicated editor where you can draft, refine, and export documents, emails, messages, and presentations with AI assistance grounded in your company’s knowledge.

Canvas works out of the box. Glean adapts to your personal writing style automatically by analyzing your existing communications across connected platforms.

Prerequisites

Some Canvas export features require additional setup by your admin.

note

Export to Gmail and Google Docs requires your admin to configure Google actions. Export to Outlook and Word requires Microsoft 365 actions to be configured.

Open Canvas

You can open Canvas in any of these ways:

• Describe a writing task in chat. Ask Glean something like "Write a report summarizing what I accomplished this week" or "Draft an email to the team about the new policy." Glean detects the writing intent and opens Canvas automatically.
• Use the composer menu. Click the + menu in the chat composer and select Canvas.
• Move a chat response into Canvas. If Glean gives you a response in chat that you want to refine further, click Edit in canvas at the bottom of that response.
• Draft an email or message. Ask Glean to "write an email" or "draft a Slack message." Canvas opens with a layout tailored to the medium, with the right fields (subject, recipients, channel) already in place.

Edit and refine

Canvas supports several ways to iterate on your content:

• Direct editing. Type directly in the Canvas editor to add, remove, or rearrange content. All changes are saved automatically.

• Conversational editing. Ask Glean in the chat panel to make changes and the updates appear in Canvas. For example, "Make the intro more concise" or "Add a section about timelines."

• Targeted editing. Highlight a specific section in Canvas and ask Glean to revise just that part, such as "Rewrite this paragraph in a more formal tone."

• Iterative rounds. Continue chatting with Glean to refine the document across multiple turns. Each round builds on the previous version.

  tip

  When your request is broad or ambiguous, Glean may display clarifying questions before generating the canvas. Answering them helps produce a more relevant first draft.

Personalized writing style

Glean adapts to your unique writing style by analyzing your existing communications across connected platforms. Generated content matches your tone, structure, and vocabulary so the output sounds like you, not generic AI. This happens automatically and doesn’t require any setup.

Citations

Canvas includes a Sources section at the bottom of the document that shows exactly where the content came from. Each citation links back to the original document so you can verify the information.

Version history

Canvas keeps a full version history of your document. Click the version history icon at the top of Canvas to browse previous versions, compare changes, and restore an earlier draft if needed.

Export and share

When your content is ready, export it to the tools your team already uses. The export options available depend on the type of content and the integrations your admin has configured.

Documents

Destination	How to export
Google Docs	Click the export menu and select Export to Docs. A new Google Doc is created with formatting preserved.
Microsoft Word	Click the export menu and select Export to Word. A .docx file is created.
Download as Markdown	Click the export menu and select Download Markdown. A clean .md file is saved to your device. Glean-hosted images are preserved as clickable links.

Emails and messages

When you draft an email or message in Canvas, the export options adapt to the medium:

Destination	How to export
Gmail	Click the primary export button to open a draft in Gmail with subject, recipients, and formatting preserved.
Outlook	Click the primary export button to open a draft in Outlook.
Slack	Export your message to a Slack channel or DM.
Microsoft Teams	Export your message to a Teams channel or chat.

Presentations

Canvas also serves as the working surface for slide generation. You can refine an outline in Canvas and then generate a branded PowerPoint presentation using your company’s template. See Slide generation for the full workflow.

You can preview generated slides and images directly inside Canvas without downloading them first. When you’re ready, export to PowerPoint, Google Slides, PDF, or image files.

Canvas content types

Canvas adapts its layout and export options based on what you’re creating:

Content type	Description	Primary export targets
Document	Reports, proposals, knowledge base articles, and other long-form writing.	Google Docs, Word, Markdown
Email	Email drafts with subject line and recipient fields.	Gmail, Outlook
Message	Chat messages for Slack or Teams.	Slack, Teams
Slides	Presentation outlines that can be turned into branded decks.	PowerPoint, Google Slides
Interactive content	Rich HTML pages, dashboards, and visualizations that live natively in Glean.	Share via Glean link

For interactive content such as dashboards, infographics, and lightweight apps, see Interactive content.

Find your canvases

• Thread history. Look for the Canvas icon in your conversation thread history to see which threads have a Canvas at a glance.

• Search. Canvas content is indexed and discoverable through Glean search.

  info

  Canvas content indexing is undergoing a managed rollout. It may not be available for your organization yet.

Use cases

• Emails and reports. Draft professional emails, reports, or proposals that reflect your authentic voice.
• Meeting summaries. Generate meeting recaps with key decisions and next steps by pulling from transcripts, notes, and follow-up messages.
• Knowledge base articles. Draft internal documentation and how-to guides that maintain consistent terminology while referencing existing company knowledge.
• Status reports. Compile progress updates by aggregating information from project tools, emails, and conversations.
• Presentations. Create slide outlines and generate branded decks from Canvas content.
• Interactive dashboards. Build visual, interactive pages that you can share with a stable Glean link.

Known limitations

• Export formatting. Glean-hosted images are converted to text links when exporting to Google Docs or Word, because those images require Glean authentication to render in external apps. Table formatting may also be partially simplified during export.
• No two-way sync. After you export a Canvas to an external tool (for example, Google Docs), edits made in the external tool are not synced back to Canvas.
• Single template for slides. Only one company-wide PowerPoint template is supported for slide generation. Individual users can’t override the template.

See also

• Slide generation - Create branded presentations from Canvas content.
• Image generation - Generate and edit visuals in Glean.
• Interactive content - Publish rich HTML pages, dashboards, and apps from Canvas.
• Google actions setup - Admin setup for Google Docs, Sheets, and Gmail export.
• Microsoft 365 actions setup - Admin setup for Word, Outlook, and Teams export.