Microsoft Whiteboard Announces Preview of New Templates

[Itai Almog]

We launched Whiteboard to provide a way for people to brainstorm ideas, plan projects, solve problems, train colleagues, and to collaborate on projects whether in person or remote, across a variety of devices. In the classroom, we wanted to give teachers and students a way to create together and share their ideas without being confined to the dimensions of a physical whiteboard. After listening to our customers, we learned that many of you like to have a easier starting point to simplify how you use Whiteboard to collaborate and work.

Today we are excited to announce the preview of new templates in the Whiteboard PC and iOS apps that will allow people to ideate and collaborate more easily. We are starting with several templates that allow for workplace scenarios like brainstorming, project planning, KANBAN sprint planning, etc., as well as quick start in the classroom. More templates and capabilities will be made available continuously in the coming months.    

The full list of templates available in preview are:   

• Brainstorming   
• Effective meeting  
• KANBAN sprint planning  
• SWOT analysis  
• Problem solving  
• Project planning  
• Retrospective   
• Project milestones  
• KWL (Know, Wonder, Learn) for education  

Whiteboard templates are now in public preview for Windows 10 and rolling out to iOS within a few days. To add templates, tap the insert button in the toolbar. 

If there are any additional templates that you would like to see included, or have any other feedback about Whiteboard, please reply to this post. Thanks for helping us improve Whiteboard, we have more exciting announcements coming soon.

[Ken_Musial]

Good Morning,

Love the product.  8 things I would request:

- A "laser" or other pointer for highlighting items to others

- A centering feature to designate a center/re-center of the board; an additional feature to return to center

- A 1, 3, and 12 month blank calendar template; with space to add day numbers and notes for individual days

- A grid layout feature to quickly/neatly designate space/size/areas for developing/inserting content

- Ability to create, save and recall my own templates

- A bullet / outlining feature

- Ability to group/combine/select different elements/text

- Export directly to pdf

Thank you again for the product.

[tyrantxmn]

I can't seem to find out how to add something from one region into another.  I have a region created from a template, but I can't paste items into that region so they are group together.  If I add a new list, I can't add it to the region created by a template.  Thoughts?

[MJ]

@Jasmin_Rashid Hi Jasmin, I too would like to be able to create and save custom templates, which I know is part of your road map. You stated there was an interim solution - can you save custom templates to Retrospective?

[jean-marieberger]

Hi, is there any minimum version of windows 10 required to be able to get the last whiteboard version and use this new feature ?

[Ian Mikutel]

@jean-marieberger At this time (Dec 2020), Microsoft Whiteboard for Windows requires Windows 10 Creators Update (RS2) or newer. 

[BAndrelski]

If I have shared a white board with co-workers and I leave the company, can I assume the whiteboard would still be available for everyone else? 

[Claudia_Veronica]

Hello,

I have set up a whiteboard for a team project and I have used multiple note grids. 
But when the team hop on the white board to use it, they don't see any grids, it says that the whiteboard cannot show this object.

Why is that?

What can I do for the team to be able to see the grids?

Thanks,

C

[Ian Mikutel]

@Claudia_Veronica Whiteboard templates and note grids are currently only available in the Whiteboard Windows 10 and iOS apps, not our Web app or Teams Meeting experience. To ensure your team can see and use the note grids, simply have them download and use the free Microsoft Whiteboard for Windows 10 or iOS apps (links below):

:thumbs_up:Free Windows 10 app: https://aka.ms/Whiteboard-Win10
:thumbs_up:Free iPad app: https://aka.ms/Whiteboard-iOS

[Andreas_Schuff]

Dear Microsoft Team,

while trying to implement the Whiteboard templates into our weekly team meetings, we came across a few limitations.

Here are some suggestions for potential points to improve:

• It would be awesome if templates were more configurable - e.g. It would be great to be able to add more columns/define the number of columns within the Kanban template (e.g. 3 columns instead of only 2) and to have the ability to preconfigure if newly added notes should are added in new rows or columns.
• The different template colors for the note background is limited to only 6 colors - we would love to have the 12 colors (which is the non-template standard). In our scenario each person is haveing one color, but we have more than 6. 

Greetings from Germany

[px_ab]

Hello Microsoft Team,

are there any infos on when these preview features will come to the web versions, or leave the preview status?

We have Mac Users in our Team which dont have access to a desktop app and have to use the web-version, which is a problem because we cant use the new features yet. 

Any insight on your roadmap would be great!

Thanks!

[lichtst]

Hi

we need the same as my previous commentor:

Are there any plans to enable the preview features for the Web view as well? Currently we see only "Not available" for all theses great templates for Teams mebers outside our company!

Regards, Stefan Licht

[lichtst]

@Ian Mikutel unfortunately, the Win10 Whiteboard App works only for team members and not for guests. Fur team guests it is not possible to see the new (preview) templates!

[faithallington]

@Andreas_Schuff Thanks for the feedback! We are working on configurable templates with the behaviors you describe. In the meantime, you can add additional note grids onto the canvas directly next to the template. We're also working on expanding our sticky notes. 

[faithallington]

@lichtst Thanks for the feedback! Our first step is to make sure the note grids, lists and templates are viewable by web users - you should start to see some of this soon! We are also working on bringing more canvas capabilities to our web users. 

[faithallington]

@lichtst Guests of a Teams channel can view a whiteboard in the meeting, but only if they switch to their guest account inside the Teams client. We're aware this is a limitation and we're working on bringing more support for external users to Whiteboard.

[drroy]

I am trying to create my own Design Thinking Templates in MS Whiteboard, I am able to create the templates but those I only can use not able to save them as a separate template.

Can you please make this possible that the user is able to create templates as per their needs and save them in the template library for their local profile? But hey can be used by stakeholders in the organization. I mean a reusable template.

Also one this template is good a user can submit to MS then MS can consider to make this as a global template that can be used by all users of MS Whiteboard?

[drroy]

Another issue I would like to highlight is the text tool , we cannot drag this text box to where we want to add the text, also we do not have the Fonts and sizes to increase or decrease the size of change the fonts. Can you please incorporate these features?

[Shubham_Goyal]

@drroy Thanks for the feedback. Both customizable templates & Text Formatting options with the requested functionalities are features that we are working on. Will share more details as & when we have more clarity on the timelines for these so stay tuned & keep whiteboarding!! 

[Jasenko]

Hi 

I need an answer to a pretty much tough question - have you guys given up Whiteboard? This article is from september 2019 and not much has happened with Whiteboard since. I am asking because we are considering moving to Whiteboard for UX and facilitation. It really looks like a promising MVP, but without further development it doesn't come near to being useful - you can't even create your own templates and lay out, say a whole design sprint up front. It's a massive limitation. On the other hand if this improvement is on the way it might be the reason for us to adopt Whiteboard...

Thanks in advance! Looking forward to your answer:). 

[Tim_Banting]

Great start; however, where is the ongoing commitment? Microsoft show such promise- Whiteboard can be used in Teams- you even have Surface hardware with a stylus to make life super-easy! However, without extra templates, I don't feel you are anywhere close to closing the gap between the likes of Mural, Miro, and Lucidspark.

I do hope that Redmond realizes that meetings in Teams aren't all about Powerpoint presentations!

[JoshAVI]

Would love, Love, LOVE to see sports templates. I know Microsoft is big on trying to get into schools, so I can easily imagine coaches talking strategy and positioning using whiteboards, in person or remote. Or collaborating on the development of new plays. I've been free handing this on my surface pro X to teach my little league team on where fielders should go on a given play... The TV spot you can make with this idea. Coaches working with the analytics/behind the scenes team to come up with the perfect play for a given situation LIVE to win the game - copyright 2021.  Get it done!!

[Barry_Chocolate]

One thing that would be extremely helpful would be if the templates included some axis for drawing charts and plots.  Almost every session at university\work is spent drawing charts and plots (i work in data science).  Freehanding the lines/points is fine but having straight axis with tick marks would be really helpful.  Equally having a template for a table that we could write values in would make things so much neater and easier to follow.