Microsoft Whiteboard and Teams

If you've tried to use the preview Whiteboard in Teams, you might have been a bit frustrated by its limitations. Currently, you can 'ink' - but that's about it. If your handwriting (with a mouse, anyway....) is as bad as mine, that's not great if you want to put text on your whiteboard. There also doesn't appear to be a way, from Teams, to export your creation.

But there is a (relatively) easy workaround to get more functionality, it is actually documented in the Microsoft article Use Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams.



Step 1 - install the Windows 10 Microsoft Whiteboard app from the Microsoft Store.

Step 2 - Once it's installed, run the Whiteboard app and sign in with your Office 365 credentials, then close Whiteboard.

Step 3 - Start your Teams meeting, click on the Share button and share a whiteboard (sometimes that menu item isn't immediately visible - scroll to the far right).

Step 4 - Open the Windows 10 Whiteboard app, and you'll see any whiteboards you've created, including the brand-new empty one for the current meeting. You can tell which is which (they all have the same name 'Whiteboard meeting', annoyingly) from the date and time. Click on the newest one, and that will be the one for your current meeting.



You can then use the tools in the native app, and the results will appear in the shared whiteboard in Teams. When you've finished, you can Export the whiteboard from the native app to a PNG file (click on the ... on the item and select Export).

You can also install the Whiteboard app for iOS (though not yet for Android, it would seem). I can't see anyone trying to mark-up on a phone, but an iPad works very well.

Note that you do need to carry out steps 3 and 4 in that order - the 'Home' page on the app doesn't seem to dynamically update itself when a new Whiteboard is created outside of the app.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Skype to Teams - which route?

Image
If you're currently using Skype for Business in your organisation, you have almost certainly started to think about how you might start to implement Microsoft Teams, and indeed, eventually, migrate fully to Teams. The question is, what's the best approach? Inevitably, there is no one answer, as every organisation is different. Microsoft's own guidance is here , and continues to evolve as they work with more and more organisations. Having worked with a customer on this topic recently, I've tried to put down some of the pros and cons of each approach. Straight-to-Teams This is my own name for this approach, and it's not covered in the Microsoft guidance, but I've included it for completeness. Pro No messing about with coexistence - users go straight from Skype for Business one day, to using Teams the next. Cons Large change brings the potential for technical risks. Users have to get used to a lot of change all at once. Realistically, you'...
Read more

Microsoft Licensing for Small Businesses

Image
The other week, I was looking into using Teams as a phone system for a potential small business customer - and spotted a major problem. But it's not a technical one, it's a licensing (or commercial) one: if you're licensed with one of the Small Business Plans (for less than 300 users), you cannot add a Phone System licence. To be able to add a Phone System licence, you need to have at least an 'E3' licence, which really surprised me. I spent a little while trying to tabulate the relevant features of a number of different licence plans, and produced this table to help try to compare and understand the options. Some points: I've not listed every single product and feature, just what I thought the ones which would be most relevant to a small business customer. I've translated the 'features' into actual 'products' to make it easier for techies to understand. All pricing is standard, with no discounts applied, as of July 2019 in GBP...
Read more