Docs and artifacts

An artifact is a project notebook whose next page can turn into a wall-sized whiteboard. Priya writes the brief on page one, Arjun opens a storyboard beside it, and Maya pins a comment to the exact frame that needs a stronger call to action.

Where artifacts live

Create artifacts from a project’s Docs tab or a conversation’s Artifacts tab. Workspace documents used for support knowledge are created from Service desk → Knowledge. An artifact inherits its location’s access: project and channel members can open attached artifacts, and private-project rules still apply.

Each artifact is multipage. A page can be a rich-text Doc, an infinite Whiteboard, a Spreadsheet, a Slides deck, a Kanban board, a Form or a Custom page (your own HTML). Use the page sidebar to add pages, drag them into order, rename, duplicate, copy a page link, open another page side by side, or delete a page. At least one page always remains, and deleted content can be recovered from version history.

Click Add artifact to open the template gallery: 94 templates across twelve categories, searchable by name or purpose (press / to jump to search). Every card shows a live thumbnail of what you will get. Hover a card and choose Use to create it as is, or click it to customise.

Each template has its own options, and the preview redraws as you change them. A storyboard asks for the shot count and aspect ratio; a retrospective offers five formats with optional dot voting; a discovery call scores the prospect with BANT, MEDDIC, SPIN or GPCT; a content calendar draws the real grid of the month you pick. Dates, timeboxes and countdowns are worked out for you, and list options accept a pasted list, one item per line.

Category	Examples
Basics	Blank doc, whiteboard, spreadsheet, presentation, kanban board, form or custom page, doc + whiteboard, team wiki, checklist
Connected apps	Sales pipeline hub, project hub, budget tracker, quarterly business review — sheets, charts, boards, decks and docs sharing one data set
Forms & custom pages	Request intake with a triage board, event registration with a live seats-left page, feedback survey with a results page, pricing calculator, KPI dashboard page
Meetings	Timeboxed meeting notes, daily standup, 1:1s with pre-dated sessions, retrospective, workshop run-of-show, icebreaker, brainstorm
Planning & strategy	Project brief, OKRs, SWOT with TOWS, roadmap, Now · Next · Later, Eisenhower matrix, decision matrix, risk register with heatmap, Gantt plan, business model and lean canvases, stakeholder map, decision log
Product & design	PRD with user flow, journey map with emotion curve, personas, empathy map, wireframes, sitemap, impact / effort, RICE, story map, usability test, Crazy 8s, value proposition canvas
Engineering	Design doc / RFC, architecture diagrams, ER diagram, sequence diagram, postmortem, bug report, sprint planning, API reference, release notes
Sales & customers	Discovery call, account plan with org chart, competitive battlecard, proposal, QBR, pipeline review with forecast, outreach sequence, customer onboarding plan
Marketing & content	Content calendar, campaign brief with budget split, social planner, blog post, press release, launch countdown, newsletter
Creative & video	Script & storyboard, shot list with call sheet, moodboard with palette, podcast run-of-show, two-column A/V script
People & HR	Interview kit, 30-60-90 day plan, job description, org chart, performance review
Diagrams	Flowchart, mind map, fishbone, Venn, swimlane, timeline, cycle

Templates you have used recently appear under Recently used in the gallery. Press the heart on any template to keep it under Favourites, use the Docs, Whiteboards, Sheets, Slides, Kanban, Forms, Custom pages and Connected apps chips to narrow the grid by page type, or choose Surprise me to open a random template. In the customise view, the Good for tags find related templates in one click.

Build and update with AI

Artifacts have an AI assistant that builds, edits and feeds them for you. It decides what to change, and Zoabase makes the change in the artifact like any other edit, live for everyone who has it open. The only code it writes is the HTML of custom pages, which runs in a sandbox (see below).

Create with AI. In the Add artifact gallery, describe what you need — “a launch plan with a task sheet, a kanban board and a status chart” — and choose Draft it. AI drafts every page and you preview them before anything is saved. Ask for changes (“add a risks page”, “use the midnight theme”) as often as you like, rename it, then choose Create artifact. If a search finds no template, the gallery offers to create that search with AI instead.

The AI assistant. Inside an artifact, choose AI in the header. The assistant works on the page you are looking at and has two modes:

Mode	What it does	Examples
Build & edit	Adds and restructures pages, writes and rewrites docs, adds charts, kanban boards, slides, whiteboard shapes, forms and custom pages	“Turn this doc into a slide deck”, “Add a chart of cost by category and embed it in the brief”, “Add a request form that feeds a triage board”, “Make a pricing calculator page”
Update data	Feeds records into sheets and changes existing ones — and with them every kanban board, chart and live value that reads the sheet	“Add the attached leads”, “Move Acme to Won”, “Set every overdue task to Blocked”

Feed in data. Choose Paste data or Upload file under the prompt to hand AI a CSV, an Excel workbook, JSON, a Markdown table, an email or notes (up to 200,000 characters). Attaching data switches to Update data. AI adds new records, updates the ones that already exist instead of duplicating them, keeps the sheet’s formats, and never makes up numbers.

Every request appears in the panel with a summary and a line per change. Anything AI could not do — a column that doesn’t exist, a row it couldn’t find — is listed too, never guessed. Undo on a request reverts only that request’s changes and keeps everything collaborators did in the meantime; Redo puts them back.

Tip: Select shapes on a whiteboard before asking — the assistant knows what you selected.

Heads up: The assistant needs the Use AI permission, and the workspace needs an AI key configured by an administrator. Requests are limited to 20 per member every ten minutes.

Write the document

The document editor supports paragraphs and headings, bold, italic, underline, strike, highlight, links, inline code, code blocks, quotes, horizontal rules, bullet and numbered lists, task lists, tables, images, callouts, and embedded whiteboard pages. A left outline collects headings for quick navigation.

Use ⌘B/Ctrl+B for bold, ⌘I/Ctrl+I for italic, and ⌘K/Ctrl+K for links. Select text to reveal contextual tools and to start a comment. Switch between page layout and Pageless full-width mode when a table or long script needs more room.

You can import a Markdown or plain-text file as a new page. To export, see Export anything.

Type / for live data: Chart, Spreadsheet table, Kanban board, Slide deck and Live cell value. A live cell value is a number in your sentence, such as “Pipeline: $461,000”, that changes when the sheet does. In a sheet, right-click a cell and choose Copy cell reference, then paste it into a doc.

Tip: Put the Northwind creative brief and storyboard in one artifact, then use side-by-side view. The words and frames stay close enough to argue with each other productively.

Work with numbers in spreadsheets

Spreadsheet pages work like Google Sheets. Type into cells, use Tab and Enter to move, and start with = for a formula. More than a hundred functions are built in: SUM, AVERAGE, IF, COUNTIF(S), SUMIF(S), VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, ROUND, TEXT, TODAY, date maths and more. As you type a formula, matching functions are suggested and the cells it reads are outlined; click cells to insert their references. Formulas can read other sheets, as in ='Deals'!D2 or =SUM(Deals!D:D), and they keep working when rows or columns are inserted, deleted or the sheet is renamed.

The toolbar formats numbers (currency, percent, decimals, dates), text (font, size, bold, italic, colours), cells (fill, borders, alignment, wrapping), sorts by a column and freezes header rows and columns. Drag the small square at a selection’s corner to fill a series, continue numbers or dates, or copy a formula down. Copy and paste works with Excel and Google Sheets in both directions. The status bar shows the sum, average, count, minimum and maximum of a selection, and everyone’s cursor shows in their colour.

Chart turns the selection into a column, bar, line, area, pie, donut or scatter chart. A chart can also summarise rows, for example “sum of Amount by Stage”. Charts belong to the whole artifact, so the same chart can appear in a doc, on a slide and on a whiteboard, and every copy redraws when the numbers change.

Plan in a kanban board

A kanban board shows the rows of a sheet as cards. One column, such as Status or Stage, decides each card’s lane. Dragging a card writes that cell, and editing the sheet moves the card. Charts of the same sheet, such as cards by status, redraw as you work. Choose which column sets the lanes, which column is the card title, which fields show on cards and which colours their edge. Lanes can be renamed (every card follows), recoloured, collapsed, reordered by drag, or given a card limit. Click a card to edit every field. Board in a sheet’s toolbar turns any table into a kanban board, and a new kanban page creates its own data sheet.

Collect answers with forms

A form page is a set of questions — short and long answers, email, phone, number, date, dropdown, checkboxes, yes/no, a 1–5 rating and links — and every answer becomes a new row of its sheet, with Submitted at and Submitted by filled in. Kanban boards, charts and live values built on that sheet update as answers arrive, so a request form can feed a triage board directly.

Switch between Form (what people fill in) and Questions (the builder) in the toolbar. In the builder, set each question’s type, whether it is required, help text, placeholder and options, reorder or duplicate questions, and set the description, the button label and the message shown after submitting. Each question fills the sheet column of the same name; renaming a question renames its column, so earlier answers stay with it. Removing a question keeps its column and answers in the sheet. A new form page creates a “responses” sheet for itself, or you can point it at an existing sheet. People who can only view the artifact see the form but can’t submit it.

Build custom pages with HTML

A custom page is your own HTML, CSS and JavaScript — a calculator, a styled dashboard, a client portal, a landing section or a form with its own layout. Use Preview, Split or HTML in the toolbar; typing saves after a short pause and the preview reloads.

Custom pages are styled like Zoabase out of the box and follow the light or dark theme: plain HTML gets the app’s fonts, colours, inputs, buttons and tables, and classes such as page, card, grid cols-3, stat, badge and btn primary lay out a page quickly. They can show the artifact’s sheets live and write to them:

• <span data-zb-cell="Budget!B4"></span> shows a cell, data-zb-count="Tasks" counts rows and data-zb-sum="Deals!Value" adds up a column; data-zb-where="Status=Done" filters them.
• A <template> inside data-zb-rows="Deals" repeats for each row, with {{Column}} replaced by the row’s value.
• <form data-zb-sheet="Leads"> saves its fields as a new row of the Leads sheet — each input’s name is the column.
• Scripts use the zoabase object: zoabase.onChange(fn), zoabase.rows("Deals"), zoabase.sum("Deals", "Value"), zoabase.append("Leads", { Name: "Ada" }) and zoabase.update("Tasks", { Task: "Ship" }, { Status: "Done" }).

Heads up: Custom pages run in a sandbox. They can’t reach your account, cookies, other pages of Zoabase or the internet (scripts and styles may load from jsDelivr, cdnjs and unpkg), and they only see this artifact’s sheets. Writes are refused for people who can only view the artifact.

Present with slides

Slide decks have a filmstrip of slides, nine layouts (title, title and content, two columns, section, big number, chart, image and text, quote, blank), seven themes, per-slide backgrounds and transitions, and speaker notes. Each slide is edited with the full whiteboard toolset, including live charts and tables from your sheets. Present opens a full-screen presentation: arrow keys or a click move forward, N shows notes and Esc exits.

Sketch the whiteboard

Whiteboards offer rectangles, ellipses, diamonds, triangles, stars, text, sticky notes, frames, straight or routed connectors, arrows, freehand drawing, and images. Select, move, resize, rotate, group, lock, hide, reorder, style, duplicate, and link shapes. Frames help organize a moodboard or storyboard, while connectors can remain bound to shapes as those shapes move.

The board supports zooming and panning, multi-selection, alignment-style editing through the inspector, and keyboard-driven tools. Press C for the comment tool. Insert a live chart or table from a sheet with the toolbar.

The Layers panel lists the board like Figma does. Frames contain the shapes drawn inside them, and groups fold under their own named row. You can search layers or filter them by type (text, shapes, media, lines, frames). Click to select, Shift-click to select a range, and ⌘-click to add one layer. Drag rows to restack them, or drop a row onto a group to join it. Lock or hide whole frames and groups, and double-click to rename. Hovering a row outlines its shape on the artifact. Right-click a row to restack it, select all shapes of that type, show it on the artifact, and more. Right-click the artifact and use Select layer to pick a shape that is hidden under another one.

A doc page can embed a whiteboard page, which is useful for showing the storyboard directly beneath the script or a flowchart inside a process note.

Export anything

Open the ⋯ menu in the artifact header to download the current page:

Page	Formats
Doc	Word (.docx), PDF, Markdown, web page (.html), plain text, document JSON
Whiteboard	PNG, JPEG, SVG, PDF, shapes JSON
Spreadsheet	Excel (.xlsx), CSV, TSV, PDF, web page, Markdown table, JSON rows
Slides	PowerPoint (.pptx, with real charts and tables), PDF, PNG or SVG per slide, a self-contained web presentation, Markdown outline
Kanban board	CSV, Excel, PNG, SVG, PDF, Markdown, web page, JSON

Live data is written into each export, so a Word file shows today’s chart and numbers. Download everything packs every page in its main formats, all charts and a README into a single .zip. All sheets as one workbook saves every sheet as one Excel file, where cross-sheet formulas keep working. Import as new page accepts Markdown, CSV, TSV and Excel files; each Excel worksheet becomes a sheet page.

Edit together in realtime

Artifacts use a shared Yjs document. Local edits are batched and merged on the server; other editors pull only the changes they are missing. The header reports Saving, Saved, Offline, or an error state.

Presence avatars show who else has the artifact open. On whiteboards, collaborators can share their current page, pointer, selection, and viewport. Select an avatar to jump to that person’s page and view. Concurrent changes merge at the document level; two people changing the same whiteboard shape resolve on a last-writer-wins basis for that shape.

If the connection drops, queued local edits retry with increasing delays. Realtime notifications announce that an artifact changed, but the actual document diff moves through the access-checked sync endpoint.

Heads up: “Realtime” does not make an artifact public. A copied artifact link still requires workspace access to its channel, project, or workspace document.

Comment in context

Select text in a doc to create a comment tied to that range. On a whiteboard, use the comment tool to drop a pin at a coordinate. Teammates can reply, resolve, reopen, or delete threads according to the available controls. The Comments panel can show open or resolved threads, and selecting a thread jumps to its target.

For Northwind, Maya can highlight “15-second cutdown” in the brief and ask whether it is 9:16, while Priya pins a separate note to frame three of the storyboard. The questions stay attached to what they mean.

Save and restore versions

Zoabase takes an original snapshot on the first edit and automatic snapshots roughly every ten minutes while changes continue, retaining up to 100 automatic versions. You can also save a named version at any time.

Open Version history, select a snapshot to preview the whole artifact in place, then choose Restore this version. Before restoration, Zoabase saves the current content as a named version, giving you a path back from the path back.

Publish knowledge carefully

Admins can publish or unpublish workspace documents from Service desk → Knowledge. Published articles appear in your workspace’s public help center (/help/<your-workspace>) and become searchable there.

Heads up: Project and channel artifacts cannot be published to the help center. Publishing is explicit and admin-only; a new workspace article begins as a draft. Review customer-facing content before publishing because the help center is outside the signed-in team workspace.