Zoom software usage is at its peak. While working from home, Zoom packages enough features to host virtual meetings and webinars. From teachers conducting online teaching classes to small-medium offices exchanging ideas with their clients — all can make the best of it. And whenever such exchange in involved, users should utilize screen sharing and Whiteboard features in Zoom. But many wonder, how do they use a Whiteboard in Zoom? While the usual screen sharing remains everyone’s go-to feature, the Whiteboard function remains a bit elusive. Whiteboard is useful during situations like brainstorming plans with a team, explaining a subject in detail, sharing your ideas, and you can always get more creative with it. In this post, we are going to talk about the Zoom whiteboard function. Where to find it, it’s features, and other tips and tricks regarding the Whiteboard.
Where Is Whiteboard Function in Zoom
As mentioned earlier, the Whiteboard feature is not available upfront. It is available through the screen share option during meetings. Follow the steps below to access it. Step 1: Open the Zoom app and select New meeting to start a new meeting. Share the meeting ID and password with the team members. Step 2: Once everyone has joined the meeting, you can tap on the Share Screen option from the bottom menu. Alternatively, you can use Alt+S keyboard shortcut to start screen sharing. Step 3: Before you start screen share, you need to enable a couple of options from the Advanced Sharing Options. Click on the tiny upward arrow on the Share Screen button’s top-right corner and select Advanced Sharing options. Step 4: From the subsequent window, pick ‘One participant can share at a time’ from first option. Then, select Only Host for the Who can share? option. When you pick those two options, Zoom will disable screen sharing for other participants. Step 5: Now tap on share screen or use the Alt + S keyboard shortcut to open the screen sharing menu. Step 6: Here, you have a bunch of options to share screen. You can select the open app windows, add files from OneDrive or Google Drive, use the portion of the screen, or opt for the Whiteboard function. Step 7: Select Whiteboard and tap share at the bottom right corner. Zoom will open the Whiteboard with a toolbar that consists bunch of functions to use on the Whiteboard. Let’s go through them.
Whiteboard Editing Functions
Unlike Microsoft Teams’ basic Whiteboard, Zoom offers a bundle of useful features for the presenter on the Whiteboard. Let’s take a look at some of the vital options available. Draw: The draw menu consists of a bunch of shapes for you to pick. You can use an arrow, circle, rectangle, and other tools from the draw menu. It is much better than Microsoft’s highlighter and pen tool in Teams. Stamp: As the name suggests, the stamp menu offers several ready-to-use stamps. They include arrow, star, heart, question mark, cross mark, etc. You can just select the relevant stamp from the menu and tap on the whiteboard to add them. Text and Format Menu: This is one of the many reasons why many would prefer Zoom over Microsoft Teams to use Whiteboard. Zoom allows you to add text on the whiteboard. You can also change text color, size, add bold or italic effect to it. Apart from that, you can use the undo, redo, and clear option to make the changes. The save button is a must-have for everyone. After brainstorming ideas with team members, you should save the current Whiteboard to the PC. You can hit save and it will save the Whiteboard as an image to the Zoom folder on the device. If the single Whiteboard is small enough for you then you can tap on the small icon below the Whiteboard and it will open the new Whiteboard for you. You can move between them using the arrows. One security feature to keep in mind while sharing the Whiteboard in Zoom. During the live video call, you can tap on the Security button at the top of the screen share window and disable Annotate on Shared Content from the Allow Participants to menu. It will prevent other members from annotating on the shared screen in Zoom.
Chat During Screen Sharing
Pro Tip: Use Zoom Keyboard Shortcuts for quickly opening options instead of browsing through the menus. From the following menu, select Chat and it will open the chat window to message everyone. You can also use the file integration from the chat windows and share the relevant files to the team members.
Record Meeting
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 tap on the More option from the options bar at the top of the window and select Record to start recording. You can either record a simple video or video with audio of your screen sharing session or the whiteboard activities.
Use Whiteboard Like a Pro
I can see Zoom’s Whiteboard function getting popular in the education sector. I have seen tutors using it to mimic the physical classroom board on Zoom’s whiteboard and teaching the lengthy subjects using the multiple boards in Zoom. As for us, we are using Zoom Whiteboard to discuss code logic among the junior developers in the team. Next up: Want to learn how to use Zoom like a power user? We’ve got a great guide that will help you with this. See below.
