Platform overview

Inside Customer's Canvas Hub

Explore how Customer’s Canvas supports template-driven customization, personalization, rendering, and production workflows.

Platform capability map

The platform supports workflows from product setup through rendering and production delivery. Teams can adopt the complete workflow or integrate individual capabilities into existing systems.

Connect your systems →Operate at scale →Explore Integration Services →

Prepare products →

Templates, mockups and other assets assets, products, options, variants

Customize artwork →

Various editing/customization experiences

Personalize with data →

Variable data printing and template population

Preview results →

Thumbnails, proof images, photorealistic previews

Capture orders →

Projects, order metadata, start order processing

Render print files →

Async PDF rendering, print specs, rendering pipelines and tasks.

Deliver output →

HTTP callbacks, emails, FTP, cloud storage integrations.

Prepare products, templates, and assets

Set up the products, design templates, mockups, image libraries, fonts, and customization rules that define what customers can order and how they can personalize it.

Manage reusable assets

Organize templates, mockups, image galleries, fonts, and other reusable assets in a centralized library through both the admin interface and APIs.

  • Manage templates, mockups, image galleries, fonts, and related assets
  • Organize large asset libraries with folders and metadata
  • Link assets with each other, for example, associate image libraries with specific image placeholders in design templates
  • Manage assets through admin tools or APIs

Prepare design templates

Create reusable templates (internally referred to as designs or design templates) by importing existing artwork or building templates directly in Customer’s Canvas.

  • Import design templates from Adobe InDesign IDML or Photoshop-based sources
  • Adjust templates using built-in template editing tools
  • Create templates programmatically through APIs or SDKs
  • Support common design elements such as text, images, placeholders, QR codes, barcodes, and vector objects

Define editing rules

Template preparation includes configuring what customers can safely edit during ordering.

  • Lock elements or specific properties
  • Define editable regions and image placeholders
  • Configure variable text and data-bound elements
  • Set text behavior such as overflow handling
  • Protect brand, layout, and production rules
  • Keep required layers above user-edited content, such as address blocks or production overlays
  • Set constraints for raster resolution, artwork dimensions, minimum font size, bleed, and others

Configure form-based personalization

For guided workflows, teams can define form schemas and bind inputs to template elements.

  • Define fields such as text, numbers, selections, and structured inputs
  • Bind form fields to template variables
  • Validate customer input before preview or rendering
  • Configure format rules, e.g. for phone numbers or currency
  • Support form-based personalization without exposing a full design editor

Configure variable mockups

Prepare product visualization and variant logic for customizable products.

  • Import Photoshop-based mockups
  • Define design placement areas
  • Support products with multiple colors, materials, or print locations
  • Reuse templates and mockups across product variants

Connect products to storefronts

Map Customer’s Canvas products to external ecommerce or ordering systems.

  • Connect products to external product IDs or SKUs
  • Support multiple storefronts from one tenant
  • Manage product-specific customization settings inside Customer’s Canvas
  • Avoid building custom configuration UI in every connected storefront

Customize artwork

Let customers create, edit, upload, or personalize artwork directly inside your ecommerce site, portal, or business application while keeping design, brand, and production rules under control. Use ready-to-use editing experiences or build custom interfaces with Customer’s Canvas APIs and SDKs for specialized workflows.

Embed editing into your application

  • Add browser-based editors directly into your ecommerce site, ordering portal, or business application
  • Keep customers inside your application instead of redirecting them to a separate design tool
  • Use ready-made editing experiences or build a custom editor for specialized workflows
  • Choose different customization experiences for different products, audiences, or ordering scenarios

Choose the right editing experience

  • Use a freehand editor when customers need full control over layout and design
  • Use form-based personalization when users should fill in structured fields connected to a template
  • Use an option-based customizer when customers configure products through options, variations, or predefined content areas instead of editing artwork directly
  • Support upload-based workflows when customers provide finished artwork, PDFs, logos, or other files

Support advanced artwork editing

  • Let users upload their own content or select approved images from galleries
  • Support precise on-canvas text editing, formatting, lists, and advanced typography
  • Add QR codes, barcodes, vector objects, grouped elements, and adaptive design components
  • Validate artwork during editing with warnings and blocking errors for configured quality or production rules
  • Support full-color printing, embellishments, and limited-color production methods

Save customer-specific designs

  • Store customized designs as temporary or persistent customer-specific assets
  • Support registered users and anonymous customer sessions
  • Reuse saved designs for repeat orders or later editing
  • Connect saved designs to the orders or projects that use them

Personalize with data

Generate personalized artwork by populating templates with structured data, from simple variable fields to high-volume VDP workflows - for grouped orders, batch jobs, and large-scale campaign workflows.

Populate variable content

  • Fill template fields with customer information, offers, coupon codes, dates, order details, and other structured data
  • Generate QR codes and barcodes from URLs, identifiers, coupon codes, and personalized values
  • Populate image placeholders using Customer’s Canvas asset libraries or externally hosted images
  • Combine customer-edited artwork with data-driven personalization

Personalize many items from a dataset

  • Identify the variables expected by a template
  • Connect datasets to templates prepared for variable data personalization using APIs
  • Generate personalized output for each record during VDP rendering
  • Support small batches such as team apparel or badges, as well as high-volume direct mail campaigns

Common personalization scenarios

  • Generate personalized direct mail campaigns, marketing materials, business cards, badges, invitations, labels, and promo products
  • Personalize output for customers, employees, locations, franchisees, recipients, teams, or campaign segments
  • Create related-product previews for upsell workflows by applying customer artwork or data to additional templates and mockups

Preview results

Show customers, operators, and connected systems what has been created before the order moves to production.

Users work directly with the design through WYSIWYG editors that provide immediate visual feedback during customization. Beyond the editor itself, the platform can generate previews, thumbnails, mockups, and proofing artifacts for customized products, uploaded artwork, and personalized templates.

Generate design previews and thumbnails

  • Generate preview images and thumbnails for templates, customer-edited designs, uploaded artwork, and API-generated created designs
  • Use previews in product galleries, project lists, shopping carts, and external applications
  • Request previews through APIs as part of storefront, portal, or backend workflows
  • Show the current design state without requiring users or operators to open the editor

Visualize products with mockups and 3D previews

  • Apply artwork to product mockups prepared for specific product variants
  • Show product views for different sizes, colors, materials, shapes, or decoration areas
  • Display live product visualization in supported editors, including 3D models with textures updated during editing
  • Generate related-product previews for upsell and cross-sell scenarios

Support proof review and confirmation

  • Generate proof images and low-resolution PDFs for customer review
  • Display production details such as bleed, safe areas, panel sides, and print boundaries during proofing
  • Require customers to confirm artwork approval before continuing the order process

Capture orders

Capture the information needed to process customized and personalized orders, including customer inputs, uploaded artwork, saved designs, product selections, and external order metadata.

In Customer’s Canvas Hub, this information is organized into projects. A project acts as the processing container that connects external orders, campaign records, or line items with designs, rendering jobs, generated artifacts, statuses, and delivery workflows.

Capture order context

  • Create projects from ecommerce, portal, checkout, or campaign workflows
  • Store order metadata, custom fields, external order numbers, and customer references
  • Attach references to customized designs, uploaded artwork, PDFs, or other customer-provided files
  • Support orders with one or multiple line items

Track project status

  • View and filter projects by status, date, external order number, or other criteria
  • Update project statuses through APIs or BackOffice UI
  • Use statuses to coordinate order processing and production handoff
  • Check whether generated artifacts are available for download or delivery

Trigger processing

  • Start rendering and processing workflows automatically when projects reach specific statuses
  • Submit rendering and processing jobs to asynchronous queues
  • Process individual line items independently within larger orders or projects
  • Connect project and order data to rendering, artifact generation, and downstream delivery

Render print files

Generate print- and production-ready output from customized designs, uploaded artwork, and data-driven templates.

Generate production-ready output

  • Render print-ready PDFs and raster outputs such as JPEG, PNG, and TIFF
  • Generate output from customized designs, uploaded artwork, and data-driven templates
  • Support production settings including bleed, trim, resolution, color profiles, CMYK/RGB workflows, spot colors, cut lines, and PDF/X-4 output
  • Preserve editable text for downstream workflows or convert text to outlines for print-safe production
  • Preserve vectors, transparency, spot colors, and embellishment layers throughout the rendering pipeline

Run rendering pipelines

  • Convert designs into final output through configurable rendering pipelines
  • Include steps such as rendering, imposition, packaging, archiving, or output preparation
  • Store intermediate and final artifacts for download, or delivery
  • Use different rendering configurations for different products, or output requirements

Render VDP and batch jobs

  • Generate output for each record in a dataset during VDP rendering
  • Support small grouped personalization jobs as well as high-volume campaign workloads
  • Use asynchronous rendering queues so large jobs do not block customer-facing experiences
  • Scale rendering infrastructure to support throughput and SLA requirements for large or time-sensitive jobs

Deliver output

Deliver generated files and processing artifacts to the downstream systems, teams, and production workflows that need them.

Store and access artifacts

  • Generate production-ready files, previews, proofs, archives, and related processing artifacts
  • Access artifacts through OAuth2-secured APIs or direct links for external or public access workflows
  • Download artifacts from the BackOffice when manual access is needed, in addition to automated delivery options
  • Store artifacts according to tenant-level retention policies or delete them through API when files are no longer needed

Deliver artifacts to external systems

  • Deliver generated files to FTP servers, cloud storage, and external applications
  • Package multiple outputs into archives for grouped delivery workflows
  • Send artifact links by email or through HTTP callbacks
  • Include project details, order metadata, artifact links, and custom payload data in configurable email and HTTP request templates
  • Integrate with downstream systems such as Order Desk

Connect your systems

Integrate Customer’s Canvas with your ecommerce platform, ordering portal, backend systems, and production workflows.

Designed as part of a larger software ecosystem, Customer’s Canvas supports embedded editing, API-driven workflow automation, external product and order synchronization, and integration with downstream production systems.

Embed customer-facing experiences

  • Embed customer-facing editors directly into ecommerce sites, portals, and business applications using JavaScript
  • Keep users inside your application instead of redirecting them to a separate design tool
  • Connect embedded experiences to your product pages, cart, checkout, and order workflows
  • Build custom editing interfaces using Customer’s Canvas APIs and SDKs for custom ordering flows and editing experiences

Connect data and content sources

  • Manage Customer’s Canvas entities such as products, assets, and rendering workflows through APIs
  • Map products to external IDs, SKUs, or storefront-specific identifiers
  • Connect supported editors to external image sources to provide integrations with your DAM or stock image libraries.
  • Use external CRM, MLS, mailing list, or other data sources to provide recipient, customer, order, or campaign data for batch personalization and VDP workflows

Automate order processing workflows

  • Create projects from external checkout, portal, campaign, or backend workflows
  • Start rendering or processing workflows from your application logic
  • Check and sync project status through APIs
  • Notify external systems through configurable HTTP callbacks when results are ready

Use developer tools and implementation examples

  • Use the Customer’s Canvas developer portal for API documentation, integration guides, and examples
  • Integrate backend systems through REST APIs, OpenAPI documentation, and native API clients for .NET, Node.js, PHP, and Python
  • Embed editors and customization experiences with JavaScript SDK components
  • Start from sample code, plugins, and reference implementations for common integration scenarios.

Need help implementing this?

Explore Integration Services →

Operate at scale

Run high-volume customization and rendering workflows on infrastructure designed for production environments.

Customer’s Canvas Hub can be used as managed cloud infrastructure or deployed in environments with specific operational requirements. The platform supports asynchronous processing, scalable workloads, artifact storage, and deployment options for teams that need predictable performance, security, or control.

Use managed cloud infrastructure

  • Use Customer’s Canvas Hub as a cloud platform for editors, APIs, rendering, storage, and processing workflows
  • Avoid building and maintaining your own customization and rendering infrastructure
  • Let internal teams focus on product experience, ordering workflows, and business logic

Scale processing capacity

  • Use asynchronous queues to distribute rendering and processing workloads
  • Scale processing capacity for large batches, seasonal spikes, or time-sensitive jobs
  • Configure dedicated resources when workloads require predictable throughput or isolation
  • Plan capacity around volume, SLA expectations, and workload patterns

Plan storage and data retention

  • Store large volumes of assets, saved customer artwork, uploads, and processing results
  • Configure retention policies for generated artifacts and other stored data
  • Plan storage behavior around order volume, file size, personalization workloads, and customer reuse scenarios
  • Use API workflows to manage stored data when custom cleanup or lifecycle rules are required

Choose deployment options

  • Use managed cloud deployment in available regions, including the US, EU, and Australia, to reduce latency and support data residency requirements
  • Discuss dedicated or hybrid infrastructure options when specific workloads, isolation, throughput, or customer requirements call for them
  • Use on-premises deployment when security, compliance, data residency, or customer-specific requirements demand a private installation
  • For on-premises deployments, Customer’s Canvas provides IT maintenance and operational support for the platform infrastructure
  • Set up separate development, staging, and production environments for on-premises deployments when required

Build product customization into your platform

Discuss your workflows, architecture, and customization requirements with the Customer's Canvas team.

Discuss your use case