Knowledge base

December 10, 2020

Use Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams.

In response to Slack’s growing popularity, Microsoft has finally announced the Microsoft team for organizations. In addition, software giants continue to add new features to teams. While it competes closely with Slack, Zoom, and others, Microsoft emphasizes collaboration as a specific part of the Teams app rights when it comes to collaboration, allowing Microsoft Team users to create, share, and chat a whiteboard as they work together.

Microsoft has added custom backgrounds for video calls, pop-up chat and meeting windows, Outlook plug-ins, and more. Among them, Whiteboard is one of the best features to work efficiently with team members. Microsoft teams already allow administrators to share the screen with their members. If you want to exchange ideas with participants, you can choose the whiteboard feature during videos.

The whiteboard feature is only available for desktop applications. In this post, we’ll discuss whiteboard access features in Microsoft Team and other tips and tricks related to video calls in Team software.

How to access the Microsoft team’s whiteboard

As mentioned above, Microsoft’s Whiteboard is only available for desktop applications and not for mobile applications. When you use the Microsoft team on Windows or Mac, Whiteboard cannot be used to chat directly with a team member. It is only available on team channels. Follow the steps below to use it.

Step 1: In the Microsoft Team application, click the Teams tab in the sidebar. Select a team there and go to the relevant channel.

Step 2: To add a new channel, click the three-dot menu next to the team name and create a channel. Add members.

Step 3: In the menu at the bottom of the channel, you can now see the combined option. Press it and it will start a group video call between the group members. Before you start a video call, you can add relevant topics.

Step 4: The video call window shows a toolbar that gives you access to features such as mute, background effects, chat features, and screen sharing.

Step 5: Select the Screen Share option, and you’ll be prompted to select from your current desktop, open Windows, browse files from PowerPoint slides, PC/Mac, other team channels, or OneDrive.

Step 6: At the end, you’ll see the Whiteboard section, which offers two options: Microsoft Whiteboard and Invasion Freehand. Choose Microsoft Whiteboard and it will open the whiteboard for you.

Invasion is a dedicated UI/UX design tool that designers use to design user interfaces and their freehand tool is similar to Microsoft Whiteboard.

women-microsoft-teams.jpg

Whiteboard drawing feature

Microsoft offers several drawing options when using Whiteboard. You can use the standard pen tool red, black, blue and green to demonstrate the technique.

You can also use the Gum tool, which allows you to remove the non-relevant part of the whiteboard. Moving tools are my favorite. You can use it to move the board or place it in a specific section.

Because trackpads on Windows laptops can be a mixed bag, I recommend using the mouse to draw or scribble with the pen tool.

After you complete the brilliant work, you might want to save the images and raw ideas as images on your PC or Mac. To do this, tap the settings icon in the upper-right corner, and select Export Image as SVG.

Share a whiteboard and chat

If you share your screen, you can ask others to join the stream. Tap the share button at the top and a sublink is created. Share these so others can attend.

You can chat, mute, and invite other group members to the whiteboard. Microsoft Teams has added all practical options to the whiteboard to ensure that you don’t have to leave the stream to activate the administrator.

Mute allows you to mute audio from your side. The chat feature is my favorite. The side window in the whiteboard opens and lets you chat with team members. This is the best way to communicate directly with team members and they can talk to each other while sharing the whiteboard screen. After the conversation ends, you’ll see all the chat history on the channel, including the meeting name.

From the Members tab, you can invite current users of the meeting, user suggestions, and even members of other channels.

Conclusion

Microsoft Whiteboard isn’t perfect either. It is not possible to add predefined text and shapes, such as circles, arrows, lines, squares, or whiteboards. There is no support for image editing. Hopefully, future updates will provide these options.

Source: cybersuggest

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