Portal anatomy

A working tour of the Brand Atlas portal. After reading this page you will know where every section lives, how the sidebar is organised, and how the view changes depending on whether you are signed in as a brand owner or a team member.

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The three regions

The portal is divided into three regions, in the same shape across every page:

1. The sidebar (left). Navigation. The eight standard sections, then Horizons, then the workflow surfaces (Inbox, Guest Passes, Settings).
2. The canvas (centre). The content of whichever section or surface is open. The largest region. Edit-in-place for brand owners; read-only for team members.
3. The context panel (right). Section-specific information: history, comments, attribution, and (on Guardian) Oswald.

The three regions are stable. Whatever section you open, the layout is the same.

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The sidebar in detail

The sidebar is organised in a fixed order:

• The brand name at the top. Click to return to the atlas home.
• Search. Full-text search across the populated brand record.
• The eight standard sections. Always in the order: Logo & Identity, Typography, Colour System, Applications, Strategy, Voice, Photography, Social.
• Horizons. A group containing every active Horizon. Archived Horizons are reached through Horizons → Archive.
• Inbox. Update Requests, comments, and notifications waiting for you.
• Guest Passes. Active passes and pass management (brand owner only).
• Settings. Account, team, billing, AI configuration, integrations.

The sidebar collapses into a hamburger on narrow viewports. The order is preserved.

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The canvas

The canvas is the working area. Three behaviours are worth knowing:

• Edit-in-place. For brand owners and editors, every block on the canvas is editable directly. Click the block; the editor opens; save returns to the read view.
• Auto-save. Changes save as you edit. There is no “save” button. The history records the change at the moment of save, attributed to you.
• Section navigation. The top of the canvas shows breadcrumbs (Atlas / Section / Sub-section) and previous/next links to the adjacent sections.

For team members, the canvas is read-only. The same blocks are visible; the editor does not open on click.

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The context panel

The context panel is shown on the right side of every section page. It contains the metadata about the section the team often needs adjacent to the content:

• History. The recent changes to this section. Click any change for the full diff.
• Comments. In-section discussion attached to specific blocks. Useful for clarifying a decision without raising a full Update Request.
• Attribution. Who has edited this section, and when. Includes the brand owner and any editors granted access.
• Oswald (Guardian only). The Oswald conversation for this section, if one is open.

The context panel can be collapsed. Most brand owners keep it open; most team members keep it closed.

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What the team member sees

A team member’s view of the portal is identical in shape to the brand owner’s view, with three differences:

1. No edit controls. Blocks do not open into the editor on click.
2. Raise Update Request button. A persistent button at the foot of every section (on Keeper and Guardian) lets the team member propose a change.
3. Limited Settings. Team members see only their own account settings; they do not see billing, team, or brand-wide configuration.

The eight standard sections, the search, the context panel, the sidebar order, and the visual treatment are all the same for both roles. The team member’s view is a window on the same brand record.

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What the brand owner sees and the team does not

Three things are visible to the brand owner that team members do not see:

• The Inbox count. The number of pending Update Requests, displayed in the sidebar.
• The Brand Record settings. Author, history retention, export, milestone publishing.
• The Billing screen. Tier, invoices, payment method.

These are the editorial and operational controls that come with authorship.

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Search

Search is full-text across every populated section and every active Horizon. The search index is updated within seconds of a change. Two patterns to know:

• Exact phrase. Wrap a phrase in quotes (“clear space”) to match it exactly.
• Section restriction. Prefix a query with voice: or colour: to restrict to a section.

Search results are ordered by recency and relevance combined. Archived Horizons are excluded by default; tick Include archived on the search results page to include them.

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