Mastering Tabs in Puzzle: Organize Workflows Like a Pro

Available with any of the following subscriptions, except where noted: 🟢 Starter (up to the plan’s step limit) | 🔵 Builder | 🟣 Optimizer |

⚫ Enterprise

Big workspaces can get messy fast. Workflows start blending into one massive map, tools pile into an endless stack, and teams stretch across departments. As more gets added, the canvas designed to bring clarity can become harder to navigate. Without a simple way to separate and organize the moving parts, finding what matters takes more time than it should.

Puzzle Tabs bring order to every canvas. Divide your Workflows, Teams, People, and Tools into focused tabs that reflect the way your organization actually operates. Organize by department, function, region, project, client—or whatever structure works best for you—and move between tabs without losing sight of the bigger picture.

This guide will walk you through how to create, manage, and optimize Tabs across Puzzle, helping you build a workspace that’s easier to organize, navigate, and scale.

Key Benefits of Using Tabs

🗂 Organize Any Canvas by Theme: Split your Workflows, Teams, People, or Tools canvases into tabs so each view stays focused on the content that belongs together.

🎯 Categorize by Department, Function, or Client: Group content by whatever structure fits how your team operates. The same tab paradigm works consistently across every canvas.

🤝 Improve Team Collaboration: Give teammates a focused view of only the workflows, teams, tools, or people relevant to their scope, without the noise of the full workspace.

🌐 Include Tabs in Shared Views: Any tab on any canvas can be included in a Shared View so external viewers see exactly the slice you want them to see.

🎥 Watch the Video Walkthrough

Want to see Tabs in action? Watch our quick walkthrough video demonstrating how to create, organize, and navigate tabs in Puzzle.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Use Tabs Across Canvases

1️⃣ Create and Rename Tabs

Tabs are created the same way on every canvas.

🎯 Open the canvas where you want to add a tab (Workflows, Teams, People, or Tools).

➕ Click the plus icon to add a new tab — it will appear as "Tab 2" by default if you don't have any other tabs.

✏️ To rename a tab, click the down-arrow next to the tab name and select Rename, then type your preferred title (e.g., Finance, Customer Journey, Future State) and press Enter.

💡 Tip: Use consistent tab names across canvases when the same theme applies (e.g., a "Sales" tab on Workflows, Teams, and Tools). Consistency makes cross-canvas navigation feel natural.

2️⃣ Create Tabs with Puzzle MCP

Use Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP-capable AI to create tabs on any canvas.

🔌 Connect your AI client through Puzzle MCP.

🗣️ Ask your AI to create a tab and specify the target canvas.

✏️ The tab appears at the end of the tab row on the specified canvas with the name you provided.

🔗 Pair this with other MCP actions to spin up a tab and drop initial steps into it from a single prompt.

Example prompts:

"Create a new tab called Finance in my Puzzle workspace."

"Create a new tab called Finance Tools on my Tools Canvas."

Sample Output from Claude:

💡 Tip: Give the tab a descriptive name in your prompt so it lands ready to use.

Output from Puzzle Workspace:

3️⃣ Manage and Organize Tabs

All actions below are available on every canvas unless noted.

🍔 Jump to Any Tab from the Tab Menu

Quickly find and switch to any tab from a single vertical list.

📍 Click the hamburger icon on the workflow tab bar (at the bottom of the canvas).

📋 A vertical menu opens with every tab in your workspace.

🖱 Click any tab name to jump straight to it.

💡 The hamburger menu is for navigation only — use it to quickly jump to any tab without scrolling. To rename, duplicate, or delete a tab, navigate directly to it and click the down-arrow ▾ next to the tab name.

🖱️ Scrolling Through Tabs

If you have many tabs and can't see the one you need, the tab bar is scrollable — there is no visible scroll bar, but you can scroll by hovering over the tab bar and using your trackpad or mouse:

Trackpad (Mac or Windows): Hover over the tab bar at the bottom and swipe left or right.
Mouse: Hover over the tab bar and use your scroll wheel to scroll left or right.

🔃 Reorder Tabs

Drag and drop tabs left or right to change their position within the canvas — just like rearranging sheets in a Google Doc.

🌀 Duplicate Tabs

🔒 Workflow tabs only. Duplicate isn't available for Teams, People, or Tools tabs yet.

Need to see the before-and-after process version, an alternate vision, or a departmental copy? Click the down-arrow next to a tab and select Duplicate to instantly clone an entire tab, including all its steps and layout.

⭐ Set a Default Workflow Tab

🔒 Workflow tabs only. Default tab settings apply to the Workflow canvas only.

Go to Workspace Settings > Workflow Settings, and select your default tab.
Each team member can choose a tab they want to land on when opening Workflows (e.g., Sales rep → Lead Gen tab).

🗑️ Delete Tabs

To delete a tab, first navigate directly to the tab you want to delete. Click the down-arrow ▾ next to the tab name in the tab bar at the bottom and select Delete Tab.

A confirmation prompt will appear showing the number of objects in the tab — type that number to confirm (type 0 if the tab is empty).

⚠️ This action removes the tab and all its contents permanently and cannot be undone.

4️⃣ Quick Actions: Move & Delete

Quick Actions are available on individual items across every canvas (Workflows, Teams, People, and Tools). Click any item on the canvas to see the Quick Actions options.

How to use Quick Actions:

🖱 Click any item on the canvas.

➡️ Choose Move to send the item to another tab on the same canvas.

🗑 Choose Delete to remove the item from the canvas.

📝 Note: Bulk-moving multiple workflow sections, teams, or tool groups isn’t available yet but will be coming soon!

5️⃣ Using Tabs in Shared Views

Tabs from Workflows, Teams, People, and Tools can all appear in Shared Views. When you build a Shared View, pick the content you want to include from each canvas. The tabs that content lives on show up automatically.

How content and tabs pair up per canvas:

📋 Workflows: Pick specific workflow sections. The tabs containing those sections appear in the shared view.

👥 Teams: Pick specific teams. The tabs containing those teams appear.

🧰 Tools: Pick specific tool groups. The tabs containing those groups appear.

👤 People: Search for individual people by name and add them. Whichever tab each person is assigned to appears in the shared view automatically.

How to build a Shared View with tabs:

🎯 Click the Share button in the top-right corner of any canvas.
➕ Click New View or open an existing view to edit.
📝 Enter a View Name and description, then pick the content you want to include across canvases.
🌐 When viewers open the shared link, they'll only see the tabs and content you selected.

💡 Tip: Combine content from multiple canvases in a single Shared View to give viewers a rounded picture (for example, the Sales workflow section + Sales team + Sales tool group).

Shared View:

🧠 Strategic Use Cases for Tabs

Tabs adapt to how your team groups information. Here are some ways operators use tabs across each canvas.

📋 Workflows

Client-facing processes on one tab, internal operations on another
Department-specific tabs (Sales, RevOps, Support, Engineering)
Project or campaign tabs for time-bound initiatives
Tabs by lifecycle stage (Onboarding, Active, Renewal)

👥 Teams

Tabs by division (Engineering, Marketing, Operations)
Tabs by location or region (US Team, EU Team, APAC)
Tabs by role type (Leadership, Individual Contributors, Contractors)

👤 People

Tabs by office or region (NYC Office, Remote, London)
Tabs by department (Sales, Engineering, Support)
Tabs by employment type (Full-Time, Contractor, Alumni)

🧰 Tools

Tabs by function (Sales Stack, Ops Stack, Dev Stack)
Tabs by cost tier (Enterprise, Team, Free)
Tabs by ownership (Owned, Third-Party, Deprecated)

💡 Pro tip: Use consistent tab names across canvases to create a coordinated view. A Sales tab on Workflows, a Sales team on the Team canvas, and a Sales Stack on Tools makes it easy to see your full Sales operation across every layer of your business.

Best Practices & Tips for Using Tabs

🧩 Use Consistent Tab Names Across Canvases: When the same theme applies (like Sales), name the tab the same way on Workflows, Teams, People, and Tools. Consistency makes cross-canvas navigation feel natural for everyone on your team.

🎯 Start Simple, Then Expand: Create tabs as your operation grows, not before. Start with a couple of clear tabs per canvas and split further when a tab starts feeling overloaded.

🚦 Match Tabs to How Your Team Works: Group content by whatever structure your team already uses (department, region, client, project). Tabs that match how your team thinks are the ones that stick.

🔗 Combine Tabs with Shared Views: Package related tabs from multiple canvases into a single Shared View for clients, stakeholders, or new hires. One link, one focused picture.

🖱 Use Quick Actions to Reorganize: As your workspace evolves, click any item on the canvas to move it to a different tab or delete it. Faster than opening individual sidebars for each change.

Conclusion

A growing workspace doesn’t have to become a crowded one. Tabs give you the flexibility to break complex canvases into focused, organized spaces while keeping the bigger picture within easy reach. Whether you’re mapping Workflows, structuring Teams, organizing People, or laying out your Tools, everything has a place—and everything is easier to navigate.

With the right tab structure, even the most detailed Puzzle workspace can stay clear, manageable, and built around the way your organization actually works.

Start organizing with Tabs today and experience a cleaner, more flexible way to map your entire organization in Puzzle. 🚀