Microsoft Whiteboard in meetings and beyond
How Microsoft Whiteboard works in Teams meetings, where it stores content, and the practical patterns for collaborative work.
Microsoft Whiteboard is the digital whiteboard in Microsoft 365 — an infinite canvas for sketching, sticky notes, shapes, text, images, and templates with real-time co-editing across web, Windows, iOS, Android, and Surface Hub. It works as a standalone app and as the whiteboard experience inside Teams meetings.
In a Teams meeting
Open the Share menu in a Teams meeting and choose Microsoft Whiteboard. Every participant gets a live canvas they can draw on simultaneously. Useful for:
- Brainstorming with sticky notes.
- Workshop facilitation with templates (retrospectives, design exercises, decision frameworks).
- Visual collaboration during a synchronous discussion.
- Note-taking that's more flexible than a shared document.
After the meeting, the whiteboard persists. Attendees can come back to it later, continue iterating, and reference it in subsequent meetings.
Storage and governance
Whiteboards are stored in OneDrive:
- Whiteboards created in personal context live in the creator's OneDrive.
- Whiteboards created in a Teams meeting are stored in the meeting organiser's OneDrive.
- Whiteboards created in a channel meeting are stored in the channel's SharePoint site.
That means they inherit Microsoft 365 governance: retention policies, sensitivity labels, eDiscovery, Purview audit logs.
What's in the toolset
- Sticky notes in multiple colours.
- Pens with pressure sensitivity (on touch devices).
- Shapes with snap-to-grid and connectors.
- Text with formatting.
- Images dragged in.
- Reactions for live feedback.
- Templates for retros, brainstorms, planning, design thinking.
- AI features — Copilot-assisted suggestion and summarisation (with Microsoft 365 Copilot licensing).
Practical patterns
A few that work well in practice:
- Async whiteboards — start a board before a meeting, invite participants to add their notes ahead of time; review in the meeting.
- Sprint retros with a pre-loaded retro template (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for).
- Decision frameworks — pre-load a 2×2 matrix or fishbone diagram, run the discussion live.
- Visual planning for projects with sticky notes that get moved between columns.
Admin controls
Whiteboard is enabled per tenant in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Granular controls include:
- Whether Whiteboard is available at all.
- Whether anonymous meeting participants can use it.
- Whether external sharing of whiteboards is allowed.
- OneDrive storage location preferences.
For tenants new to Whiteboard, turning it on and providing a few starter templates is usually enough — adoption follows once one team uses it visibly.