Canvas Envision Updates – What’s Coming in Q4 2022
As we move towards the fourth quarter of 2022 it’s time to take a look ahead at some of the most exciting new features that will be added to the Canvas Envision platform during the final part of the year.
Canvas Envision is a visual communication and collaboration solution that supports agile manufacturing, combining a content authoring application with cloud storage, access, and document viewing. So each quarter we’re focused on developing new features that make it easier and more efficient for users to create richer, more effective product documentation, as well as functionality that enhances the document consumption experience for downstream users. Here are some highlights to look out for:
One feature coming to Envision in Q4 which adds yet another dimension to both the creation and usage of product documentation on the platform is the ability to embed audio content within documents.
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Upcoming releases will allow you to insert existing .mp3 and .wav files into .evdocs – and to record directly to the Creator application itself. Audio snippets can be associated with and triggered by other in-document actions, including playing an animation or clicking to the next step of an instruction document.
Narration of key processes to allow for hands free documentation usage, and the ability to add additional contextual information at critical points in the document.
Embedded viewing has been available as one of our documentation sharing options for some time now, allowing users to generate a code snippet with which they can embed a fully interactive 3D documentation experience powered by the Envision cloud onto a separate website or platform. Later in 2022 we will power-up this capability with a fully embeddable viewer SDK, able to display .evdoc files held locally or on a private cloud.
Technical and product documents can be very long – some of our customers deployed Envision in part to address the challenge of existing documentation running to hundreds of pages and thousands of images.
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Envision was designed in part to allow documentation creators to dramatically increase the amount of knowledge which can be transferred in documents, while at the same time maximizing the efficiency of that transfer. Interactive 3D models are a great example of this, because document consumers can investigate every part of a product or sub-assembly in the same space within a document as that ordinarily occupied by a single image.
The new dynamic layering function coming to Envision during Q4 further enhances efficiency of data presentation and knowledge transfer by allowing you to build information front-to-back on a page, as well as distributing it vertically and horizontally.
Different layers on a page can hold different information, allowing you to create an experience in which users access additional content as they move through the instructions on a single page – or one in which users can switch between different types of information. You may want users to watch an animated video and then access a model. Or you may want multiple layers which hold text instructions in multiple languages to be accessible on demand in a single document for a diverse audience.
One of the biggest issues with technical and product documentation is that companies often have very little insight into how much, how often, and by whom critical documents are used. In fact, data from our own survey of U.S. manufacturing professionals shows that, while 70 per cent of the industry thinks it would be beneficial to be able to track and measure documentation usage, only two per cent of respondents reported having that capability within their own organization.
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Envision dashboards provide valuable insights for Envision users and admins, allowing them to track platform logins and usage, frequency of document access, and to base optimization of documentation on how it is being used. Future features will include page hits and dwell time, embedded link clicks, and model interaction tracking.
We know that Envision users aren’t our only customers; we have to serve IT managers and admins, too. In response to a number of requests for integration into customers’ existing single sign-on we have added support for Microsoft Office and Okta, Keycloak and Cognito authenticators, and for authenticators for other SSO applications that use oAuth2.0.
These are just some of the features coming to the Envision platform during Q4 this year. Keep an eye on our product blog and our YouTube channel for more detailed updates and videos as these and other exciting features come on line!
