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Microsoft 365 Blog
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Microsoft Whiteboard now available for the web and integrated in Teams

Itai Almog's avatar
Itai Almog
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Nov 04, 2019

Today we are excited to announce the general availability of Whiteboard for the web and integration with Teams meetings, releases that continue our journey to enable people to ideate and create from any device, anywhere. 

 

 

Easily collaborate with others or access your boards from any device

Today we’re making Microsoft Whiteboard for the web available for all commercial Office customers. It is available on the all apps list under office.com or directly at whiteboard.microsoft.com. We believe that the best results come when everyone participates and this release makes Whiteboard available on all your organization, school or employee devices including PCs, tablets and phones running Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android. Whiteboard for the web provides the ability to collaborate in real-time with others as well as access your existing boards. Whiteboard for the web is an important part of the Whiteboard family of clients as it makes Whiteboard available on all devices and in Teams. We are starting from an experience that is focused on real-time inking but are committed to bringing additional functionality from our native apps over time.


 

 

Run effective Teams meetings with Whiteboard

We are excited to bring Whiteboard to Teams meetings. Customers can now easily add a whiteboard to any Teams meeting by clicking on Whiteboard under the Share option. The newly created whiteboard will be automatically shared with all meeting participants and available for them to start collaborating without leaving the Teams experience. A new Whiteboard tab will also be added to the meeting to make is easy to access the board after the meeting.
Adding a Whiteboard to a Teams meeting is useful for a variety of scenarios such as diagramming collaboratively, expressing ideas, capturing agenda items and follow ups, remote training, and more. We can’t wait to learn how your organization will be using Whiteboard in meetings. Please share your stories below.

 

Updated Jul 14, 2021
Version 7.0

88 Comments

  • Thanks for your help, Itai Almog I've accessed and had a play :lol:

    1. Why can we only save as SVG? Why not jpg or png?

    2. Can't see how to give a whiteboard a title on the web app. Is this possible?

    3. Is the W10 app available for Surface Pros?

     

    Georgeina Baker

    1.  There should be an option to share as SVG or PNG. Let us know if you don’t see that as an option in Settings > Export.

    2.  It is not yet but we are working on this. 

    3.  Yes W10 app is available for Surface Pro's 

     

    Thank you

    Jasmin Rashid, Microsoft 

     

     

  • Thank you. That’s very helpful. 

    • Does that mean that all whiteboards created disappear when an account is closed?
    • can a whiteboard be owned by or saved in an O365 group, SharePoint or Team?

    🤞

     

    Georgeina Baker Whiteboards are deleted when an account is deleted, but any shared boards will remain. We recommend using the PSH cmdlets to transfer boards to a new owner, such as the person’s manager, when their account is deleted. A whiteboard cannot be owned by a group or team, but it can be linked to a Teams meeting or shared with a team.



    Thanks

    Jasmin Rashid, Microsoft 

     





    1. When you create a whiteboard, who can see it? How do you share it? Is it like MS Forms?
    2. How do the ppl who can see it access it after the initial collaboration? Eg where is it stored on the O365 environment? 

    Trying to understand for adoption purposes so we can explain simply to our wide ranging user group who will use on 121 basis, in groups and Teams 🙂

     

    Georgeina Baker  – thank you for your questions.

    When you create a Whiteboard you are able to share it by inviting any of your colleagues to the whiteboard session. While signed in, you can tap start a collaborative session by tapping the Invite button next to your name, and then writing or typing the name of the person with whom you want to collaborate. This will send that person an email and they will see your board automatically appear in their list of available boards.

    A Whiteboard is automatically saved on to the cloud and can be accessed by all participants after a session has ended. Whiteboard content is stored in Azure. Hope this helps!

  • sushanthamin's avatar
    sushanthamin
    Copper Contributor

    This is fantastic ! ... I am happy the way MS has been aggressively innovative with Office365. In today's world collaboration is the key and Office365 make life much better. 

     

    Thanks 

    Sushanth 

     

     

    Thank you sushanthamin for the feedback! – we are always happy to read how Whiteboard as a collaboration tool can make life that much easier 🙂

  • Awatatah's avatar
    Awatatah
    Brass Contributor

    Missing basic functionality like shapes, texts, etc. or am I missing something?... This is useless otherwise

     

     
    Awatatah - Thank you for your feedback. Whiteboard does have these features available across our Win10 and iOS apps. We will bring them to the Web app and Teams over time.

     

  • I also hope that Whiteboard will have more features, for writing text or table etc. something like powerpoint which can be easly modified and scatched to discuss while in meeting. Not all users want draw letters/words 😛

     

    hkusulja Thank you for your feedback! These features are available in our Win10 and iOS apps. We will bring them to the web app and Teams over time.

     

  • Petri-X's avatar
    Petri-X
    Bronze Contributor

    Super !

    But few questions:

    - You have not enabled the whiteboard with the newer version? The one where are multiple pens and "ink to shape" etc.. features? Will that be available in future (close?) ? 🙂

     

     

    Petri-X 

    Thank you for your feedback. These features are available in our Win10 and iOS apps. We will bring them to the web app and Teams over time.

    (edit. removed the comment about Win7)