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Use the Whiteboard application in Teams meetings.
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Quick reference
Brainstorm Ideas and Collaborate on Whiteboards
We use the Whiteboard App in Teams whenever we want to brainstorm thoughts and ideas with others on a collaborative canvas.
Instructions
Whiteboards are a fantastic way to collaborate and brainstorm ideas with co-workers. The Whiteboard is a standalone app in its own right but we can create and share whiteboards from directly within Teams meetings much like sharing a document.
Whiteboards are a canvas for thoughts and ideas. We can create a whiteboard ahead of time and load it up in the Teams meeting or we can create a blank Whiteboard 'on-the-fly' once the meeting has started.
Whiteboards are loaded with annotation tools. We can add text, images, stickers, gifs, reactions, links, documents, and much more to a whiteboard.
Start a Teams Meeting
- Open Teams from the App Launcher
- Go to a channel
- Click the Meet button and choose Meet now
- Adjust the meeting settings as required
- Invite participants
- Click Join now
Share an Existing Whiteboard
- Click the Share button
- Click Microsoft Whiteboard
- Select an existing Whiteboard
- Use the annotation tools to add text, images, stickers, gifs, reactions, comments, etc. to the Whiteboard
We will see the profile photos of the other meeting participants at the top of the screen. Any participant can make changes and edits to the Whiteboard.
Create a New Whiteboard
We don't have to create a Whiteboard ahead of the meeting; we can create one once we are in the meeting instead.
- Click the Share button
- Click Microsoft Whiteboard
- Click New Whiteboard
Share the Whiteboard
We can share the Whiteboard with others during or after the meeting. The Whiteboard by default will be saved to the Whiteboard app in Microsoft 365.
To Share from a Teams Meeting
- Click the arrow icon in the top right-hand corner
- Type a message
- Select the recipients
- Click Send
To Share from the Whiteboard App
- Open Whiteboard from the App Launcher
- Select the Whiteboard
- Click the Share button
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- 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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