Brainstorm Ideas and Collaborate on Whiteboards

Quick reference

• 00:04 Whiteboards are a fantastic way to collaborate with our co-workers and
• 00:09 brainstorm ideas in a really visual way.
• 00:12 If you can imagine being in a meeting room with your colleagues and
• 00:16 you're all gathered around a big piece of paper or a whiteboard.
• 00:19 Everybody has a pen and everybody is jotting down different ideas related to
• 00:24 a project or an event in a truly collaborative way.
• 00:27 Well, Microsoft has pretty much taken that experience and put it online within Teams.
• 00:33 So let's take a look at how we can work with whiteboards.
• 00:36 So, I'm already in Teams, we're going to start another meeting, so let's click on
• 00:41 the Meet button, I'm just going to call it General this time, let's join the meeting.
• 00:46 And this time I am going to invite a colleague, I'm going to invite Adele.
• 00:51 So let's request that she joins, and there we go, Adele is now also in the meeting.
• 00:57 Now, it might be that I already have a whiteboard pre-prepared that I want to
• 01:01 share with the other participants in this meeting.
• 01:04 And as you might expect,
• 01:05 there is an individual whiteboard app within Microsoft 365.
• 01:10 So if we just very quickly jump back to the Home page, click the app launcher, and
• 01:15 we're going to go to Explore all your Apps.
• 01:17 We can search for the Whiteboard app at the top, there it is, let's load it up.
• 01:22 And we can then see any existing whiteboards that we've created, or
• 01:26 we can create our own new whiteboards.
• 01:29 So you can see here that I already have one that I created a while ago.
• 01:32 So this is great, because if you do have a whiteboard that you want to pre-prepare in
• 01:37 order to share it in a Teams meeting, then you can simply create your new whiteboard
• 01:42 from here and then share it once all the participants arrive.
• 01:45 Alternatively, you can do both of these things from directly within Teams.
• 01:50 So if we close down the Whiteboard app and just jump back to our Teams meeting,
• 01:54 what I can do is click on the Share button at the top, and
• 01:58 notice one of the things that we can share is a Microsoft Whiteboard.
• 02:02 So if I click to open, notice that I'm getting exactly the same thing.
• 02:07 I can choose to load up an existing whiteboard or I can create a new one.
• 02:13 So let's start by loading up an existing whiteboard, I'm going to click on this,
• 02:17 and there it is, loaded into the window, and
• 02:20 it's being shared with all participants.
• 02:22 And you can see in the top corner, both myself and
• 02:25 Adele are currently working in this whiteboard.
• 02:28 If I hover over her little profile picture,
• 02:31 it says that Adele has this file open.
• 02:33 Now in a whiteboard, this is pretty much like scribbling on a piece of paper,
• 02:37 we have lots of different tools.
• 02:39 Notice here, this little floating toolbar,
• 02:41 where we have various different pens that we can use to make annotations,
• 02:45 we have highlighters, just here, if we need to highlight any information.
• 02:50 We can add a ruler, if we want to draw straight lines, and
• 02:54 we also have an eraser in here.
• 02:56 Now aside from that, if we go to these little icons on the left-hand side and
• 03:00 click on the plus, it's going to pop out a little menu that allows us to add all
• 03:04 different types of things into this whiteboard.
• 03:07 So I could add sticky notes,
• 03:09 you can see that I have one here holding the key contacts information.
• 03:14 We can add text boxes, and that's simply a case of selecting and clicking, and
• 03:18 then we can type whatever we need to type.
• 03:20 Now, if this is a bit small, we have some zoom-in buttons at the bottom.
• 03:24 So we can definitely zoom in, and we can simply drag around to move the canvas.
• 03:30 We can add shapes, we can add reactions.
• 03:32 So maybe I really like something on this particular whiteboard,
• 03:37 I can grab the heart and I can just click to register my reaction.
• 03:41 We can add images, we can chose templates, we can add documents, links and video.
• 03:46 So a really interactive way of brainstorming ideas.
• 03:50 And the cool thing is that the other meeting participants can also contribute
• 03:54 to the whiteboard.
• 03:55 So if we zoom in a little bit, you can see here that Adele's icon is showing,
• 04:00 and this means that she is typing down in this area.
• 04:04 So if I click on Adele, I can see that she's actually left me
• 04:07 a little comment saying that she really likes this.
• 04:10 And I can reply, Thanks, and send that through.
• 04:15 Now, once we finished working on the whiteboard,
• 04:18 we have a little share option up here.
• 04:20 So if we click Share, we can then share this whiteboard with anybody we like,
• 04:24 doesn't necessarily have to be with people who were just in this meeting.
• 04:28 And at any point, we can click on Stop sharing, and
• 04:31 all of the information that we've added to the whiteboard will be saved back to
• 04:35 the whiteboard app and available to everybody in Microsoft 365.
• 04:39 So very easy to load up an existing whiteboard, but
• 04:42 just as easy to create a new whiteboard on the fly when we're in a meeting.
• 04:47 So if we click on Share again and go to Microsoft Whiteboard,
• 04:52 let's click on Home, and we can simply select New Whiteboard.
• 04:57 So maybe we're having a conversation in the meeting and
• 05:00 we want to hash out our ideas in a more visual way, we can load up a whiteboard,
• 05:05 everybody can dive in and start adding their ideas.
• 05:08 This is also brilliant if you run things like training sessions, and
• 05:12 you want all your students to contribute to a particular exercise.
• 05:15 You could create your exercise in a whiteboard and then load it up and
• 05:19 everybody can work on it.
• 05:20 So whiteboards are a great way of collaborating and brainstorming ideas and
• 05:25 sharing those ideas with meeting participants.

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