Introduction to Canopy
What is Canopy?
Canopy is a modern platform for Enterprise Architecture Management. It enables organisations to document, visualise, and manage all components of their business and technology architecture in one place.
Who is this guide for?
This guide is for everyone who uses Canopy - enterprise architects, IT managers, business analysts, developers, and administrators. Whether you are evaluating the platform, managing your organisation's IT landscape day-to-day, or configuring the system as an admin, you will find the information you need here.
No advanced technical knowledge is required to get started.
Key Benefits
- Comprehensive visibility: View all applications, processes, capabilities, and technologies across the organisation in a single platform.
- Informed decision-making: Visual reports (portfolio, capability maps, dependencies, lifecycle, cost, and more) that facilitate evaluation of the current state of technology infrastructure. Get insights straight out of the box, or configure to suit your team's specific requirements; Canopy is fully customisable.
- Lifecycle management: Track the status of every technology component through five phases - from planning through retirement.
- Collaboration: Multiple users can work simultaneously, with configurable roles, stakeholder assignments, comments, to-dos, and notifications.
- On-demand AI assistance: Start uploading your business intelligence with a single click. Canopy combines web search with a local or commercial LLM to produce type-aware summaries - complete with confidence scores and source links. Fully configurable: choose where to use AI suggestions, pick your search provider, and select the model.
- Visual diagrams: Create architecture diagrams with the embedded DrawIO editor, fully synchronised with your organisation's system catalogue. Draw on Canopy's native catalogue of over 60 value streams and 9,000 business capabilities to get started.
- Business process modelling: BPMN 2.0 process flow editor with element linking, approval workflows, and maturity assessments.
- ServiceNow integration: Bi-directional sync with ServiceNow CMDB to keep your EA landscape connected with IT operations data.
- Multilingual support: Available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, and Danish.
Key Concepts
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Admin | Administrator - has full access and permissions to your Canopy instance, and can configure and extend the platform on your behalf |
| ADR | Architecture Decision Record - captures a decision's context, alternatives, and consequences, with status workflow and card linking |
| BPM | Business Process Management - model business processes with a BPMN 2.0 editor, link diagram elements to cards, and assess maturity, risk, and automation |
| Card | The basic element of the platform. Represents any architecture component: an application, a process, a business capability, etc. |
| Inventory | Searchable, filterable list of all cards across every type. Bulk edit, Excel/CSV import-export, and saved views with sharing |
| Card Type | The category a card belongs to (Application, Business Process, Organisation, etc.) |
| EA Delivery | The TOGAF-aligned delivery surface - Statements of Architecture Work, Architecture Decision Records, and the landscape-level Risk Register |
| Lifecycle | The temporal phases of a component: Plan, Phase In, Active, Phase Out, End of Life |
| MCP Server | Read-only AI tool access via the Model Context Protocol - query EA data from Claude Desktop, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and other MCP clients |
| Metamodel | The structure that defines what card types exist, what fields they have, and how they relate to each other. Fully admin-configurable |
| PPM | Project Portfolio Management - manage Initiative cards as full projects with status reports, Work Breakdown Structures, kanban + Gantt task boards, budgets, costs, and a per-initiative risk register |
| RBAC | Role-Based Access Control - app-level roles plus per-card stakeholder roles with 50+ granular permissions |
| Relationship | A connection between two cards that describes how they relate (e.g., "uses", "depends on", "is part of") |
| Reports | Pre-built visualisations: Portfolio, Capability Map, Lifecycle, Dependencies, Cost, Matrix, Data Quality, and End-of-Life |
| SoAW | Statement of Architecture Work - a formal TOGAF document scoping an architecture initiative |
| TurboLens | AI-powered EA intelligence - vendor analysis, duplicate detection, modernisation assessment, the 5-step Architecture AI wizard, and compliance scans against EU AI Act / GDPR / NIS2 / DORA / SOC 2 / ISO 27001 |
| Risk Register | Landscape-level TOGAF Phase G risk register, separate from initiative-level PPM risks. Owner assignment auto-creates a To-do |
| Web Portal | Public, slug-based, read-only view of part of the EA landscape - shareable without a login |