Microsoft Whiteboard
Microsoft Whiteboard is a freeform digital canvas that enables collaborative brainstorming and workshopping. It lets users add sticky notes, images, text, documents, and draw using pen and ink. It supports real-time collaboration across multiple devices.
whiteboard
brainstorming
collaboration
freeform-canvas
sticky-notes
images
text
documents
drawing
pen
ink
realtime-collaboration
crossdevice
Microsoft Whiteboard: Collaborative Brainstorming & Workshopping
A freeform digital canvas for collaborative brainstorming and workshopping, featuring sticky notes, images, text, documents, and drawing tools, with real-time collaboration across multiple devices.
What is Microsoft Whiteboard?
Microsoft Whiteboard is a collaborative digital canvas designed for teamwork, creativity, brainstorming, and freestyle ideation. It brings the power of pen and touch to Windows 10 devices, letting users create sticky notes, insert images and documents, type freely, and sketch using pen and ink.
Whiteboard allows freeform content creation across multiple devices, making it easy to collaborate in real-time regardless of location. Its cross-platform compatibility enables seamless workflow when working between Surface Hub, PC, iOS, and web platforms.
It provides a full set of intuitive drawing tools, including ballpoint pens, highlighters, and rulers, allowing users to express ideas visually with speed and flexibility. Rich media embedding supports inserting pictures, PDFs, and Microsoft Office documents.
Whiteboard incorporates capabilities such as shape and table detection to enhance drawings. It also offers optical character recognition for handwritten text, ensuring content remains fully searchable even after export. This also enables translation into other languages when working cross-culturally.
Finally, Microsoft Whiteboard allows users to store workspaces and content in the cloud for subsequent access and provides multi-user editing capabilities with real-time synchronisation, making it an ideal tool for creative collaboration, strategic planning, design sprints, and agile working.
Microsoft Whiteboard Features
Features
- Freeform digital canvas for collaborative brainstorming and workshopping
- Add sticky notes, images, text, documents, and draw using pen and ink
- Real-time collaboration across multiple devices
- Integration with Microsoft 365 apps and services
- Whiteboard templates and templates gallery
- Ink-to-shape and ink-to-text conversion
- Ability to export whiteboards as images or PDFs
Pricing
- Free
Pros
Intuitive and easy-to-use interface
Seamless integration with Microsoft ecosystem
Supports real-time collaboration
Versatile canvas for various use cases
Available on multiple platforms (web, desktop, mobile)
Cons
Limited features compared to some dedicated whiteboarding tools
Requires a Microsoft account for full functionality
Can be slow or laggy on lower-powered devices
Limited customization options for the whiteboard layout and appearance
The Best Microsoft Whiteboard Alternatives
Top Office & Productivity and Collaboration and other similar apps like Microsoft Whiteboard
Here are some alternatives to Microsoft Whiteboard:
Suggest an alternative ❐
Miro
Miro is an innovative online collaborative whiteboard platform designed to facilitate creativity, collaboration and visualization for teams. With infinite canvases, teams can brainstorm ideas, map user stories, plan sprints, run design thinking sessions and workshops, sketch ideas and diagrams, and more.Some of Miro's key features include:Infinite canvases for ideation and...
Excalidraw
Excalidraw is a feature-packed online collaborative whiteboard tool for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams. It has a simple and intuitive user interface that makes it easy for anyone to start diagramming in seconds without needing to learn any complex tools.Some of the key features of Excalidraw include:Various drawing tools like rectangles,...
Endless Paper
Endless Paper is a digital paper and notebook app designed to provide a natural pen and paper writing experience on digital devices. It offers an infinitely scrolling canvas with various grid, lined, dotted, or plain paper backgrounds to write, sketch, take notes, or brainstorm ideas seamlessly without page limits.Key features...
Draw.io
draw.io is a feature-rich diagramming and flowchart software that runs in your web browser. As a freemium tool, draw.io offers a free basic version as well as paid plans with more functionality for professionals and teams.With an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and built-in shape libraries, draw.io makes it easy for anyone...
Concepts
Concepts is a feature-rich note-taking and mind mapping app available for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. It provides an infinite canvas for users to structure their thoughts visually using free-form maps and outlines. At the core of Concepts is an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that allows users to quickly capture ideas and...
Drawboard PDF
Drawboard PDF is a feature-rich PDF annotation and editing application designed specifically for Windows tablets and touch-screen devices. It provides a fluid and natural experience for working with PDFs by harnessing the power of touch and pen input.With Drawboard PDF, you can annotate documents with a selection of intuitive tools...
Tldraw
tldraw is an open-source, lightweight diagramming and whiteboarding web application. It is designed to help teams collaborate visually and be creative at the same time. With tldraw, you can easily create flowcharts, wireframes, diagrams, and more using simple but flexible drawing tools.Some key features of tldraw include:Minimal and intuitive UI...
OpenBoard Whiteboard
OpenBoard is an open source interactive whiteboard and screen annotation program designed specifically for educational and professional use. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and can be used both online and offline.With OpenBoard, teachers, students, or business presenters can create and deliver engaging multimedia presentations, lessons, and lectures....
Xournal++
Xournal++ is a free, open-source digital notebook application designed for notetaking, keeping a journal, and sketching. It is available on Linux and allows you to annotate PDFs, create notes, or just sketch ideas using a graphics tablet or other pointing devices. Some key features of Xournal++ include:Support for pen input,...
SMART Notebook
SMART Notebook is an interactive whiteboard software application created by SMART Technologies in 2003. It works seamlessly with SMART's interactive whiteboards and displays to create an engaging and collaborative learning environment.Some key features of SMART Notebook include:Interactive lessons, presentations, activities, and assessmentsDigital ink with pen, highlighter and creative pen toolsInsert...
Explain Everything
Explain Everything is an interactive whiteboard app that allows users to create engaging multimedia presentations and tutorials right on their mobile device or tablet. With a simple, intuitive design, it makes it easy for anyone to bring projects to life with interactive slides, drawings, images, text, video, and audio narration.Some...
Freeform
Freeform is a flexible work management platform designed for modern teams. It brings together project management, task management, and team collaboration features into one unified tool.Some key capabilities of Freeform include:Kanban boards to visualize work and track progressCustomizable workflows to match each team's processesTasks with sub-tasks, comments, attachments, and more...
Jamboard
Jamboard is a cloud-based digital whiteboard developed by Google in 2016. It is designed for real-time collaboration and ideation among teams.With Jamboard, multiple people can sketch and write on the board simultaneously from different devices and locations. It supports inputs from styluses, touchscreens, keyboards, and even Casting from phones or...
FigJam
FigJam is a versatile digital whiteboard platform that facilitates collaboration for teams working visually. As a cross between whiteboard software like Miro and design tools like Figma, FigJam allows for both freeform visual brainstorming via virtual sticky notes, sketches, diagrams and framing, as well as structured UI and UX prototyping...
Doceri
Doceri is an interactive whiteboard and screen mirroring application designed for teachers and remote learning. It allows educators to present slides, PDFs, webpages, and other content on a digital whiteboard which students can view remotely on their own devices.With Doceri, teachers can annotate over any content in real-time using a...
Butterfly
Butterfly is an open-source, cross-platform SQL client designed to make database management easy and intuitive. With Butterfly, users can connect to MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL Server, and other major database servers to manage databases and tables, write SQL queries, and visualize data relationships.Some key features of Butterfly include:Intuitive graphical interface...
Conceptboard
Conceptboard is an online collaborative whiteboard platform used by teams for visual collaboration and creativity. It provides a flexible infinite canvas where teams can brainstorm ideas, create diagrams and flowcharts, design UI mockups, build storyboards, and more. With virtual sticky notes, freehand drawing tools, pre-made shapes and connectors, and the...
AFFiNE
AFFiNE is an open-source computer vision library that enables 3D digitization and neural rendering from 2D images. It allows reconstructing 3D scenes from multi-view images and creating mixed reality experiences.Some key features of AFFiNE include:Neural radiance fields - Generates a continuous 3D representation of the scene using deep neural networksNovel...
Edme
Edme is a free and open-source website builder designed specifically for small businesses and entrepreneurs. It provides an easy-to-use drag and drop interface that allows anyone to create a professional, custom website without needing to know coding.Some key features of Edme include:Intuitive drag and drop builder with various customizable sections...
IPEVO Whiteboard
IPEVO Whiteboard is software that enables users to turn any flat surface into an interactive whiteboard. It works by using a computer's webcam to detect writing, drawing, and gestures on the surface in real-time.Some key features of IPEVO Whiteboard include:Ability to write, draw, erase content using fingers or simple tools...
Gynzy
Gynzy is a comprehensive digital learning platform designed for K-12 education. It aims to make learning fun, effective, and accessible for students and teachers through technology.The platform provides standards-aligned content across major school subjects like math, reading, science, and more. It has over 30,000 learning activities, games, videos, and other...
Kinopio
Kinopio is a free, open-source personal knowledge management and note taking application. It allows users to organize notes, tasks, web clips, files, and more using an intuitive system based on notebooks and cards.Key features of Kinopio include:Flexible notebooks and cards system for organizing informationRich text notes with support for formatting,...
MrWriter
MrWriter is a free, open-source word processor and text editor software for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It focuses on providing a minimal yet functional writing environment without unnecessary features or distractions.Some key features of MrWriter include:Clean, intuitive interface with only essential writing and editing toolsBasic text formatting like bold, italics,...
LiveBoard
LiveBoard is an innovative visual collaboration software developed by Bluescape, designed to facilitate team productivity and agile workflows. It provides a virtual canvas where teams can brainstorm ideas, collaborate on diagrams, take notes, share files and more - all in real-time. With LiveBoard, teams can break down communication silos and...
Kids Whiteboard Drawing App
The Kids Whiteboard Drawing App is a digital whiteboard designed specifically with children in mind. It provides a blank canvas for kids to express their creativity and imagination through drawing, writing, and coloring.The app includes a variety of easy-to-use drawing and writing tools such as crayons, markers, pens, and pencils...
Lorien
Lorien is an open-source IT asset and infrastructure management software. It is designed to provide organizations with deep visibility and control over their IT assets including both hardware and software.Some of the key features of Lorien include:Discovery and inventory of IT assets like servers, desktops, laptops, printers, network devices etc.Software...
Annotate.net
Annotate.net is a powerful yet easy-to-use online image annotation platform for computer vision and machine learning projects. It enables seamless collaboration for teams to label images with bounding boxes, segmentation masks, keypoints, and customized tags.With Annotate.net, you can quickly build high-quality datasets required for training deep learning algorithms. Its intuitive...
Linoit.com
Linoit is a free online sticky notes and canvas app that allows users to visually organize ideas, tasks, projects, and more. Some key features of Linoit include:Virtual canvas where users can add colorful sticky notes and move them around to categorize and link ideasReal-time collaboration, allowing teams to work together...
Ziteboard
Ziteboard is an online interactive whiteboard and digital collaboration platform used by agile teams and remote workers. It provides a large virtual canvas for brainstorming ideas, annotating documents, wireframing UIs, running workshops, and more. Key features include:Real-time collaboration - Multiple users can edit the canvas together from anywhereWhiteboarding tools -...
