Gone are the days where teams group together in a meeting room to brainstorm and plan for the year ahead. Over the past 18 months, with a massive influx in remote or hybrid Microsoft have developed a variety of new solutions and products to improve collaboration regardless of location. The Microsoft Whiteboard is one of our favourite tools to help engage employees and improve productivity during meetings.
Microsoft Whiteboard is a great tool for planning for the year ahead with templates for brainstorming, Kanban, retrospectives, SWOT, project planning, project milestones, and many more! You can also ideate while on the go with your mobile device and annotate on the whiteboard easily. The best part is that it’s all kept together and in association with the meeting afterward.
In our recent webinar, Hybrid Workplace Hacks: Inclusive Meetings several participants raised questions about best practices and functionalities in whiteboards. Here’s our response –
Can you get whiteboards in your Teams meetings, or do you need the app?
During your Teams meeting, you can use the whiteboard feature to further explain ideas, or brainstorm. However, this feature is only available to meetings with more than 3 participants.
Note that the whiteboard in Teams is a simplified version of the Whiteboard app: you only have 4 pens and an eraser. If you have desktop app, you can open the whiteboard then all features are made available to you.
After your Teams meeting, the whiteboard is still accessible to you and any meeting participants in the Teams channel.
How do you export from Whiteboard and what different format options are available?
Whiteboard is limited in its exporting option, and currently is limited to export as an image – either as a PNG or SVG. Across the Microsoft community many have voiced the need to add an additional option to export as a PDF – our hope is that this is a feature that will be made available soon!
When we have multiple people collaborating it can be difficult to follow – how can we improve this experience.
Unlike sharing your screen, it’s a fully collaborative experience where everyone can participate. To make it easier to determine who is doing what and where on the board Microsoft has added different cursors and name tags.
If you’ve ever needed to guide co-workers or students through a board, this mode will enable you to focus attention where you want it on the board.
To learn more about how to optimise your Microsoft Whiteboard experience, check out these useful resources:
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