A interactive digital board Perfectly suited for real-time virtual teaching or remote teamwork. These are some of the utilities of Microsoft Whiteboard, an application that has been available in just under a year Windows Store. We are going to talk to you about this tool and everything you can do with it in this post.
As you will see, it is about a very versatile app which allows us to perform many and varied actions, from inserting images, drawing or underlining texts to taking measurements or exporting files to OneNote, among other things. Many possibilities that we can exploit for many different purposes.
This application can be defined as an intelligent canvas for collaborative creation. It is designed to support touch input, both using the optical pencil (recommended) such as using mouse and keyboard. It is perfect for teamwork or sharing ideas in meetings, as it allows users to access it from any location.
Microsoft Whiteboard is available completely free of charge for Microsoft users (you need to have an account to use it). It has numerous pre-designed templates, although it does not allow you to create new ones.
Download and installation
To be able to use Microsoft Whiteboard on your PC, you just have to download the application from the official store. The necessary requirements are have version 14393 or higher of Windows 10. It must be said that it is also available for certain Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad.
After downloading, the installation process is quite quick (it only takes a few minutes). After accepting the privacy conditions, we find a practical tutorial that will guide us through some of the most used processes. Everything is in English, but since it is an eminently practical software, the images predominate over the texts, so this does not pose any difficulty.
IMPORTANT: this application is coming installed by default in Windows 11, so no download is necessary.
Microsoft Whiteboard Basic Features
The Microsoft Whiteboard instrument panel has numerous functions that allow us to present all types of ideas and concepts, illustrate examples, present concepts, etc. The best of all is that it is very easy to use. These are some of the things it allows us to do:
Draw
Drawing is the main function of any whiteboard. Whiteboard makes available to the user four virtual markers with the basic colors (black, red, blue and green), as well as two special markers that change color with each stroke and a yellow marker to use as highlighter.
If we draw with a stylus or similar device, we can get thicker or thinner strokes applying proper pressure. We also have a eraser to undo the wrong lines or those we don't like. Everyone's creativity is the limit.
measure with ruler
In the Whiteboard instrument ribbon (which we can move up or down to work more comfortably), there are a series of icons corresponding to the markers and the eraser, we find an icon that shows a Measuring ruler. When you click on it, a ruler will appear on the screen, which will help us make straight lines.
It is possible to move and rotate the ruler throughout the screen, depending on what we need at any given time. It should be noted that, for the moment, this function It is only available on devices with touch inputl, that is, it cannot be used with just a mouse and keyboard.
crop and select
Any image on the whiteboard can be selected and cropped for later, e.g. resize it or move it to another location. This can be done from the crop icon just to the right of the measuring ruler icon.
Insert images and notes
Also in the bottom tool bar, on the far right, there is a handy button with the symbol «+», that allows us add images and files that we have saved on our PC to the whiteboard. With the same option it is also possible add sticky notes (The popular a post-it) in which to put texts or whatever we want.
create tables
Another practical function of this digital whiteboard is the possibility it offers us to create tables. The way to do it is very simple: all we have to do is go to the options menu (above, right) and select the option «Ink to table».
The table we want to create can be drawn by hand. It doesn't matter if the lines come out a little crooked, because the software itself will take care of straightening them and make the table according to our initial sketch.
Edit in collaborative mode
We leave for last what is perhaps the most interesting feature of Microsoft Whiteboard: collaborative editing. This allows all users who are part of a project to use any of the aforementioned functions and share their sketches and ideas with others. The maximum expression of teamwork and brainstorming.
To access this option you must click on the user icon and activate the option «Web sharing link on». With this action, a link is generated that we can send to all the people we want to include in our project. Of course, for everyone to participate they must download and install the application.
Also available in Teams
One especially aspect of Whiteboard is its integration into Microsoft Teams meetings. This offers all participants in a meeting teams the option to draw, write and exchange ideas on a shared digital canvas.
To publish a Microsoft Whiteboard digital whiteboard in Teams, this is what we must do:
- First of all, we select Gear.
- Then we will Channel.
- Then we go to the tab Add and we write "Whiteboard" in the search engine.
- When the icon appears, we click on it.
- We assign a name to the board that we want to share and we added it to the channel.
- Finally, we click on Save.
All Teams meeting participants can draw on the whiteboard, although only organizers and presenters can share their content.