Work with artifacts

An artifact is a page, document, deck, spreadsheet, design, picture, video, or file Cheqq makes for you — see Artifacts for the kinds and how access works. This guide covers what you can do with one.

Find your artifacts

Select Artifacts in the main navigation. The gallery lists everything you can open, most recently viewed or changed first:

• All, Yours, and Shared with you narrow it by who made it.
• The type menu filters by kind — Page, Document, Slides, Spreadsheet, Design, Media, or File — with a count beside each kind you have.
• Search by name, and switch between a grid of thumbnails and a list.
• If the gallery can't load, it says so with Try again. On a touch screen, press and hold a card to open its menu.

Your filters stay put when you open an artifact and come back.

Make something new at the top starts a conversation in the right mode for a page, a document, a spreadsheet, or a deck. Choose Pages for anything whose look matters, like a getting-started guide with a cover or a styled one-pager, and Docs for writing you'll edit together, like a report or a plan. Pin an artifact from its menu to keep it under Pinned artifacts in the sidebar.

Open an artifact

An artifact opens in three places:

• Beside the chat that made it. Select the card in the conversation, or its chip above the composer. The chip's arrow opens it in a new tab.
• On its own page, from the gallery or a link. The artifact fills the window, so you can show it without the conversation.
• On a public page, once you publish it.

On its own page, Open conversation takes you back to the thread that made the artifact. One that wasn't made in a conversation has Chat instead, which opens a conversation about it alongside.

The title opens the artifact's menu: Rename, Duplicate, Share, Version history, Sources (when the version cites research), Refresh, Pin, All artifacts, Download…, and Delete artifact. What you see depends on your access — an action you can't take isn't offered.

View, Comment, and Edit

The control in the header sets what a click does:

• View — the artifact works as itself. Links go where they point and checklists tick.
• Comment — a click points at part of it, so you can leave a note or ask Cheqq to change exactly that part. The count on Comment is the number of open threads.
• Edit — change it yourself, in place.

A Viewer sees View alone. A Commenter gets Comment. Owners and Editors get all three; Edit is offered on pages, documents, decks, and designs.

Comment on an artifact

In Comment mode, point at what you mean:

• Click an element to comment on it.
• Drag across words to comment on just those words. The thread quotes them.
• Drag anywhere else to draw a box over part of an element — a corner of a chart, one card in a row.

A comment box opens right there. Write what you want, then choose:

• Add comment leaves a note on it for the people working on the artifact. It stays until someone resolves it.
• Send to Cheqq turns it into a request, with that part as its scope. It goes to the conversation beside the artifact — or, on the artifact's own page, to the conversation that made it.

Open threads show as pins on the artifact. Select a pin to read the thread, Reply, Resolve it, or Send to Cheqq to hand the whole thread over as a request — Cheqq answers in the thread when it's done. The comments list beside the artifact shows every thread, and selecting one brings its slide or page into view.

Comments follow their words. When a new version rewrites the element a thread was on, the thread moves to the same words wherever they now are. A thread whose words are gone is marked moved and keeps its quote.

When someone comments or replies, the artifact's owner and everyone else in that thread hear about it, in Cheqq and by email. Change that under notification settings.

Pictures and videos

On a picture, drag a box over the part you mean. Send it to Cheqq and it edits that part, keeping the result as the picture's next version.

On a video, Comment mode gives you a play button and a scrubber. Pause on the moment you mean, then drag a box on the frame, or select Comment here for the whole frame. Each commented moment is marked on the scrubber, and opening its thread brings the clip back to it. Send it to Cheqq and it remixes the clip from there, at the same length, as the video's next version.

Spreadsheets and other files

A spreadsheet's comments are about the whole spreadsheet or one of its sheets — choose which with On in the comments list. Opening a thread brings its sheet up. Any other file takes comments as a whole.

Edit it yourself

Choose Edit and click anything in the artifact. The Edit panel opens beside it with two tabs:

• Element — the words, colour, background, weight, alignment, opacity, line height, size and spacing, and attributes. The breadcrumb above selects the element that contains it; Inside lists what it contains.
• Markup — the element's HTML, to read and Copy. To change the markup, ask Cheqq.

Every change shows on the artifact at once. Save keeps everything you changed as one version; Discard puts it back. Undo and Redo in the panel step through your unsaved changes. Leaving Edit saves what's pending.

Under Structure, Move up, Move down, Duplicate, and Remove each save straight away as a version of their own, so each can be undone from version history. Save or discard other changes first.

While Cheqq is writing the same artifact, editing pauses and the artifact says so. Comments stay open, and editing comes back when Cheqq finishes.

Tweaks

Some artifacts come with settings their author exposed — a section to show or hide, a headline to retype, an accent colour. If you can edit the artifact, Tweaks in the header opens them above it. A switch or a colour saves as you change it; text and numbers preview as you type and save when you press Enter or leave the field. Each change is one version, and a download shows what you set.

Go back to an earlier version

Open Version history from the title menu. Every version is listed, newest first, with Latest and Published marked. Select one to show it on the canvas; editing is off while you read it.

Restore — in the list, or Restore this version on the banner — makes that version the latest again, as a new version. Nothing is lost, so a restore can itself be undone. Back to latest returns you to the newest one. Spreadsheets also offer Compare against the latest version.

A published link keeps showing the version it was published with — see Keep a shared link current.

Work with slides

A deck shows one slide at a time, with its slides in a strip beside it. Type a slide number between the arrows to jump to it. If you can edit the deck, each thumbnail's menu has Move up, Move down, Duplicate, New slide after, and Delete — each its own version.

Speaker notes sit under the slide. Editors can write them in place; a note is saved as a version once you finish it — when you leave the field or change slides — not on every pause. Notes travel into the PowerPoint download.

Present a deck

Choose Present and how:

The presenter window shows the current slide, the previous and next ones, a clock you can Pause and Reset, and your notes at a size you can read from a lectern. Turn on Edit there to change a note mid-talk. End presentation, or close the presenter window, to finish.

The same keys work in the deck and in the presenter window:

A presentation clicker works too.

Download

Select Share, then Export, or choose Download… from the title menu. Each format is listed with a line on what you get:

Select the download button on a row. It says Preparing your PDF… while the file is made (a big one can take a minute or two), then Downloaded. Start another format while you wait, or close the popover: the download carries on. If a file can't be made, the row says This file couldn't be made. with Retry.

A PDF has every page, at the artifact's own paper or slide size. A document's paper, orientation, margins and page numbers come from its page setup. If a PowerPoint slide has to stay a picture to look right, Cheqq names it when the download starts. In the gallery, an artifact's menu lists each format too.

Send the link instead of a file

Sending it to someone? The top of Export offers the link instead:

• Invite people goes to Share with the email field ready. People you invite always see the latest version, and can comment and edit if you let them.
• Copy public link copies the artifact's public link. If it doesn't have one yet, it takes you to Share to choose who has access first.

A public link is view only, and shows the version you published until you update it.

Share it

Only the owner of an artifact can share it. Select Share in the header, then the Share tab:

1. Invite people by email. Type a name or address, choose Viewer, Commenter, or Editor, and press Enter. A workspace member is added straight away; anyone else is sent an invitation and gets access when they sign in. Change or remove someone's access from their row.
2. Who has access. Choose Only you, Everyone in the workspace, Anyone with the link, or Public on the web.
3. Copy link at the bottom copies the link once the artifact is published.

Anyone else who can open the artifact sees Export alone, to download it, with a line saying only the owner can change who has access.

The footer always says who can open it. Narrowing access back to Only you or Everyone in the workspace asks first, because the link stops working for everyone you sent it to.

Publish it

Choosing Anyone with the link or Public on the web publishes the artifact to a page of its own that opens without signing in. Public on the web also lets search engines list it.

The gear beside Copy link holds the link's settings:

• Link expires — Never, after 1, 7, or 30 days, or on a date you pick.
• Allow downloads — whether visitors can download it. Visitors can make a copy of their own only when downloads are allowed; see Share and remix.
• Link preview text — what shows when the link is pasted into a chat or a post.

Apply to the link saves the settings.

Keep a shared link current

A shared link shows the version you published, so work in progress never reaches it by accident. When you've changed the artifact since, Share says The link shows an earlier version. Select Show the latest version to move the same link to it, with its settings kept.

The Cheqq mark

A published artifact carries a small Created with Cheqq mark in the corner. On Free it stays. On Pro, a reader can hide it while they look — handy on a projector. Business and Team show no mark.

Pictures and videos you generate

Every picture and clip Cheqq makes is kept in Artifacts, and its caption in the chat says so — Saved to Artifacts, or Version 3 when it edited an earlier one.

In Image mode, the composer's Editing chip names the picture your next request will change, with its version. Clear it to start a new picture instead. If an edit should have been a picture of its own, Keep as its own artifact splits it out. See Edit an existing image or video.

Pictures Cheqq makes for a brochure, a picture book or another design go straight into that piece rather than into Artifacts one by one. Ask for a story with a recurring character and Cheqq draws the character first, then keeps every page's picture true to it.

Start a document

Select New document, or the Docs tile under Make something new: it opens a blank page, ready to type. See Write documents together.

Keep a workspace file as an artifact

In Files, the bookmark icon beside a file — Save to Artifacts — keeps a copy of it as an artifact and opens it. From there you can comment on it, share it, and publish it like anything else. Pictures, video, and audio play in place, and PDFs open in the PDF viewer; any other file shows its name and size with a download. Markdown and text files read as formatted text, and Make an editable copy turns one into a document of its own, leaving the file as it is.

Duplicate, rename, or delete

• Duplicate makes your own copy and opens it.
• Rename gives it a new name.
• Delete artifact moves it to Trash, and any link to it stops working.

Trash

Open Trash at the top of Artifacts to see what you deleted in the last 30 days. Restore puts an artifact back as it was, with its versions and comments. It comes back private, so publish it again if people used a link to it. Delete forever removes it for good straight away. After 30 days in Trash, an artifact is deleted for good on its own.

On a phone

Everything above works by touch. Swipe, or tap the outer edges of a slide, to move between slides; One slide and All slides switch between the slide and its strip. Comment and Edit pick what you tap, and the comment box and Edit panel dock under the artifact so it stays in view. Chat, Share, and the comment list open as sheets. Presenting fills the screen and turns it landscape.

See Cheqq on your phone for installing Cheqq to your home screen.