How to Use Whiteboard in Zoom and Other Tricks

The use of Zoom software is at its peak. When working from home, Zoom offers enough functionality to host virtual meetings and webinars. From teachers teaching online courses to small and medium-sized offices exchanging ideas with their clients, everyone can make the most of it. And whenever such an exchange is involved, users should use screen sharing and whiteboard functionality in Zoom. But many wonder, how do they use a zoom whiteboard?

While the usual screen sharing remains the functionality of choice for everyone, the Whiteboard function remains somewhat elusive. The whiteboard is useful in situations like brainstorming plans with a team, explaining a topic in detail, sharing your ideas, and you can always be more creative with it.

In this article, we are going to talk about the Zoom function of the whiteboard. Where to find it, its features, and other whiteboard tips and tricks.

Whiteboard function in zoom

As mentioned earlier, the Whiteboard function is not available in advance. It is available via the screen sharing option during meetings. Follow the steps below to access it.

Step 1: Open the Zoom application and select New meeting to start a new meeting. Share the meeting ID and password with team members.

2nd step: Once everyone has joined the meeting, you can tap the Share Screen option from the bottom menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt + S to start screen sharing.

Step 3: Before you start screen sharing, you need to enable a few options from the advanced sharing options. Click the small up arrow in the upper right corner of the Share screen button and select Advanced sharing options.

Step 4: In the next window, choose “One participant can share at a time” in the first option. Then select only the host for who can share? option. When you choose these two options, Zoom will turn off screen sharing for other participants.

Step 5: Now tap the sharing screen or use the keyboard shortcut Alt + S to open the screen sharing menu.

Step 6: Here you have a bunch of options for sharing the screen. You can select the open application windows, add files from OneDrive or Google Drive, use the part of the screen or choose the Whiteboard function.

Step 7: Select Whiteboard and press share in the lower right corner.

Zoom will open the whiteboard with a toolbar that includes a bunch of functions to use on the whiteboard. Let’s see them.

Whiteboard editing functions

Unlike the basic Microsoft Teams whiteboard, Zoom offers a set of useful features for the presenter on the whiteboard. Let’s take a look at some of the essential options available.

Draw: The drawing menu consists of a bunch of shapes to choose from. You can use an arrow, a circle, a rectangle and other tools in the drawing menu. It is much better than the Microsoft Highlighter and Pen tool in Teams.

Stamped: As the name suggests, the stamp menu offers several ready-to-use stamps. They include the arrow, the star, the heart, the question mark, the cross, etc. You can simply select the corresponding buffer from the menu and press the whiteboard to add them.

Text and Format menu: This is one of the many reasons why many prefer Zoom on Microsoft Teams to use the whiteboard. The zoom allows you to add text to the whiteboard. You can also change the color, the size of the text, add a bold or italic effect to it.

Apart from that, you can use the Undo, Redo and Erase options to make the changes. The Save button is a must for everyone. After brainstorming ideas with team members, you should save the current whiteboard to the PC. You can press Save and it will save the whiteboard as an image in the device’s Zoom folder.

If the single whiteboard is small enough for you, you can tap the little icon under the whiteboard and it will open the new whiteboard for you. You can move between them using the arrows.

A security feature to keep in mind when sharing the zoom whiteboard. During the live video call, you can press the Security button at the top of the screen sharing window and deactivate Annotate on shared content in the Allow participants to menu. This will prevent other members from annotating on the split screen in Zoom.

Chat during screen sharing

During live screen sharing, you can also chat with other team members. Press the keyboard shortcut Alt + H to display the group chat window. Otherwise, you will have to hover the cursor at the top of the screen to display the options menu and press the Plus option at the far right.

Pro tip: Use the Zoom keyboard shortcuts to quickly open options instead of navigating the menus.

From the next menu, select Chat and it will open the chat window to send a message to everyone. You can also use file integration from chat windows and share the relevant files with team members.

Record meeting

The zoom also allows you to record a meeting for future reference. To record the meeting, you can press Alt + R to start recording. Alternatively, you can press the More option in the options bar at the top of the window and select Record to start recording.

You can either record a single video or a video with the sound of your screen sharing session or whiteboard activities.

Use the whiteboard like a pro

I can see Zoom’s whiteboard function becoming popular in the education sector. I have seen tutors use it to mimic the physical classroom board on the Zoom whiteboard and teach long subjects using the multiple Zoom boards. As for us, we use Zoom Whiteboard to discuss the logic of the code among the junior developers on the team.