Zoom unveils its redesigned whiteboard

Videoconferencing company Zoom has revamped its Whiteboard product to work across a wider variety of devices and applications

Zoom Whiteboard builds on the existing basic in-meeting whiteboarding functionality and extends it to work across a variety of devices, including in your browser or via the tablet or desktop applications. It also integrates with Zoom Meetings and Zoom Rooms for touch devices like the DTEN D7 and Neat Board, with support for Zoom Chat coming soon.

Oded Gal, chief product officer of Zoom, said adding capabilities like Zoom Whiteboard to its platform should help better support customers as they adapt to new ways of working. “Zoom Whiteboard is arming teams with the power of continuous communication in an easy-to-use solution that provides a virtual space to collaborate before, during, and after a meeting,” he said.

The updated Zoom Whiteboard was first teased at Zoomtopia 2021, but has only become available to customers now.

What can you do with Zoom Whiteboard?

Zoom Whiteboard functions as a visual collaboration tool, providing both on-site and remote teams with a space to capture ideas both in real-time and asynchronously.

New whiteboarding features include advanced shapes and connectors, adding, dragging and dropping images, while sticky notes and messages can be used to highlight important ideas.

Newly created canvases can be integrated into existing workflows across video and meeting spaces and Zoom Whiteboard can be shared internally or externally with anyone that has a Zoom account, with the option to export and save.

Wayne Kurtzman, IDC research director for social and collaboration said the whiteboard refresh for Zoom puts them on a more competitive track than before, making the tool more useful and easier to use, while creating persistent content that can easily port cross devices.

“Instead of tying content to a room to support existing Zoom products, content is attached to a person as content owner. This is much more user-centric,” he said. “While not yet competing with visual collaboration leaders by features yet, visual collaboration will remain a core area for vendors to advance features for the next few years.”

The proliferation of whiteboarding technology

As alluded to by Kurtzman, Zoom is not the only platform to launch or improve its whiteboarding technology recently in the post-pandemic rush to hybrid working models.

In the last several months, Box, ClickUp, Mural, and BlueJeans, to name just a few, have all made similar announcements.

Kurtzman said the sudden abundance of whiteboarding applications is an acknowledgement of the success of pure play vendors like Miro and Mural, who are making collaboration more visual.

“People are becoming more visual and want to collaborate and express their ideas with the same ease they do in consumer applications,” he said. “Visual collaboration, like collaboration, is not just for internal use. Good community managers can bring out engagement from partners, customers, and internal teams to boost both the employee and customer experience.”