Zoom Whiteboard Explainer

Overview

This section provides an overview and introduction to Zoom Whiteboard and its core concepts.

This Explainer is intended for technical evaluators, technical sales architects, solution engineers, IT stakeholders, and similar audiences assessing Zoom Whiteboard for enterprise use. It focuses on product capabilities, integrations, administration, migration, licensing, and security considerations rather than end-user task instructions.

Zoom Whiteboard is a near-infinite canvas designed to enhance productivity and collaboration across the Zoom Workplace app

Zoom Whiteboard is a collaborative workspace where teams can brainstorm, plan, and learn. Ideate anytime, anywhere. With cross-device compatibility, users can access their whiteboards with broad platform support across web browsers, desktop operating systems using the Zoom Workplace app (including Windows, macOS, and Linux), and mobile devices (iOS, Android). Compatibility extends to drawing and writing when using Zoom Rooms for Touch on large-format displays, as well as compatible tablets with styluses.

Whiteboards can be shared with anyone, even colleagues without Zoom accounts. When utilizing Zoom's whiteboard meeting integration or sharing a whiteboard during a Zoom meeting, all participants automatically gain access without requiring shared links or Zoom sign-ins. However, administrators have full access control over whiteboards and whether or not a user has to sign in with a Zoom account to contribute.

Users can also star any board they have permission to access, including boards shared via link, channels, or projects. This enables quick access from their dashboard, not just boards they own.

Zoom Whiteboard empowers teams with real-time collaboration and drag-and-drop tools

Zoom Whiteboard offers comprehensive real-time collaboration capabilities that enable multiple concurrent users to work together on shared whiteboards.

Advanced whiteboarding tools enhance collaboration by enabling users to expand and clarify ideas through features such as video embedding, Kanban boards, and freehand highlighting. Diagramming containers offer a powerful way to group different content, such as shapes, sticky notes, images, and cards.

Upload JPEG and PNG images for annotation and sharing. Whiteboard shapes offer extensive customization options, allowing users to adjust fill and outline properties with features like corner radius adjustment and dotted outline styles.

Users can also leverage a custom color picker to enter exact HEX values for brand-consistent colors and themes.

Include advanced object types like stickers, emojis, and GIFs to add something extra to your collaborative sessions.

Users can also attach ink, stamps, and stickers to other objects—such as sticky notes, uploaded files, tables, and cards—for precise annotations and contextual feedback.

Zoom Whiteboard includes tools that help unlock your organization's collaboration with brainstorming, visualization, planning, and sharing tools

Zoom Whiteboard also offers official integrations into Atlassian Jira, Asana, and Azure DevOps and, if your organization has workflows that rely on enterprise-level document management, uses the built-in Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive connections to maintain a document chain of custody. Teams using Figma can copy and paste Figma frame links directly into a Zoom Whiteboard canvas. Embedded frames appear as live, non-editable objects that mirror the original Figma design. Refresh an embedded frame with one click to pull the latest updates from Figma without the need to export or re-upload images between iterations.

Zoom whiteboards are a persistent, rather than one-time, whiteboard solution. And because whiteboards are stored within Zoom’s cloud architecture, users can access them in the Zoom Workplace desktop or mobile app or through the Zoom Web App at any time.

Zoom Whiteboard offers enterprise-grade visual collaboration with AI Companion-powered templates, smart objects, and professional diagramming tools

Zoom Whiteboard offers extensive template and object management capabilities. Create, share, change, or duplicate templates for rapid collaboration. Administrators can even share the collection of unique templates created by one user in a company-wide gallery through a content management dashboard.

The following details only scratch the surface of the complete diagramming tools available within Zoom Whiteboard.

Using Zoom Whiteboard

The following sections discuss how you and your teams can use the robust features of Zoom Whiteboard to simplify and speed up the often time-intensive processes of collaboration and ideation.

Unlock your teams’ potential with brainstorming, visualization, planning, and sharing tools. Zoom Whiteboard targets four core use cases:

• Brainstorming: Generate ideas on a near-infinite whiteboard canvas

• Visualizing: Document processes with easy-to-use diagramming tools

• Planning: Map out projects on visual roadmaps and Kanban boards

• Sharing: Present boards interactively and captivate your audience

Zoom Whiteboard’s mobile experience has been enhanced with improved navigation, responsive tools, and streamlined performance for on-the-go collaboration.

Encourage brainstorm sessions on the fly with the help of organization-wide templates

Organizations can accelerate productivity by deploying standardized assets, from professional presentation layouts to comprehensive shape libraries, enabling brand consistency and workflow efficiency across the enterprise. With seamless publishing and sharing features, teams can leverage pre-approved templates while maintaining creative flexibility.

As a board owner or presenter, encourage participants to comment and ask questions in specific areas of the canvas while you reply without distracting from the ongoing discussion. Get instant feedback through sticky notes, reactions, or text boxes to add additional context to a diagram.

Visualize common processes and build flowcharts with a near-infinite canvas

Quickly build diagrams of complex business processes and highly technical workflows. With the Zoom Whiteboard near-infinite canvas, you won’t run out of space. Tell a story with videos, GIFs, and an extensive built-in shape library. You can even upload your own SVG files and create a custom shape library to use across your boards.

Zoom Whiteboard now includes layer management, allowing users to organize content across multiple layers. Layers can be reordered, hidden, or locked to simplify editing on complex diagrams.

Zoom Whiteboard supports Mermaid syntax for rendering flowcharts, sequence diagrams, and other structured visualizations directly on the canvas. Edit Mermaid code blocks to generate and update diagrams.

Users can insert mathematical equations using LaTeX. Equations render dynamically and can be resized and positioned like any other text element.

Zoom Whiteboard offers an integrated accessibility checker found under Board menu > Accessibility. It reviews text contrast, non-text elements, image descriptions, and container headings for frames, tables, and Kanban boards, assisting teams in detecting and fixing accessibility issues prior to board sharing or presentation.

Map out diagrams with smart connectors and object snapping. Turn visualizations into Jira tickets or tasks from within Whiteboard. Or, for additional visualization elsewhere, export a diagram to PDF or an image file for placement in documents or presentations.

Users can also star any board they have permission to access, including boards shared via link, channels, or projects. This enables quick access from their dashboard, not just boards they own.

Map and track complex project roadmaps and Kanban assets

Create complex project plans for your product roadmaps or Kanban-style development cycles and share them directly to an ongoing meeting. Users can integrate Zoom Whiteboard with task systems like Jira and Asana to further deepen ties to existing project management tools and take advantage of the infinite canvas for managing projects. Or, convert projects into simple presentations and broadcast them in a Zoom meeting.

Share ideas live across Zoom Workplace and captivate your audience

Share whiteboards quickly within Zoom Workplace, or even create a new whiteboard during a meeting with built-in controls. Not in a meeting? Use Zoom Chat to send a link that brings users directly into Zoom Whiteboard. Zoom Canvas includes interactive preview windows within each document linked to a Whiteboard, saving casual viewers the need to make an extra click to see a diagram.

If you’re using other productivity chat applications alongside Zoom Workplace, integrations with Slack and Microsoft Teams enable asynchronous collaboration through Zoom Whiteboard.

With support for breakout rooms and attention management tools including voting sessions, Zoom Whiteboard is your partner for sharing content during planning sessions, workshops, and more. And unlike other whiteboard solutions that act as standalone apps, with Zoom Whiteboard you can open a board directly in a meeting, and your meeting participants automatically get collaborative access without additional actions required of them.

For education use cases, Individual Whiteboard Mode lets a teacher launch a private, individual whiteboard page for each student simultaneously, invoked similarly to voting or private mode. Each student can only edit their own assigned page and can toggle between their own view and the teacher's board. The teacher gets a dedicated navigation view to jump between student boards, monitor progress in real time, and annotate directly on any student's page. Students can't see or edit each other's work, making this well-suited for warm-up exercises, silent individual work, and in-session assessments with minimal setup.

Transform collaboration with intelligent solutions for modern teams by supercharging Zoom Whiteboard with AI Companion*

Zoom Whiteboard's AI Companion integration enhances digital collaboration through targeted artificial intelligence capabilities.

Zoom AI Companion streamlines whiteboarding tasks with expanded generation and assistance:

• Mind maps

• Flowcharts

• Sticky notes (including automatic clustering)

• Tables

• Cards (generate multiple cards with automatic descriptions)

• Kanban boards

• Presentations

• Charts

• Sequence diagrams

• Class diagrams

• Entity-relationship diagrams

• Architecture diagrams

• Quadrant charts

• Images from text prompts

Board owners and editors can save frequently used AI Companion prompts as named quick action buttons and attach them to specific frames. Any collaborator can then trigger a saved prompt with a single click, applying it to all content within that frame. This can help standardize how teams use AI Companion across a shared board.

AI Companion can also summarize whiteboard content, providing concise overviews of ideas captured during sessions. Summaries can be exported or shared across Zoom Workplace.

AI Companion can generate new templates from prompts and generate whiteboards from meeting content, streamlining post-meeting workflows. You can also give AI Companion cross-product context by attaching Zoom Meetings, Canvas, or Zoom Chat threads directly through the unified attach context picker in the AI Companion panel. This lets you pull in a project plan from Zoom Canvas to generate a visual timeline, or reference a recent Zoom Chat conversation to surface key decisions, all without leaving your whiteboard or manually copying content from elsewhere across the Zoom Workplace app.

Zoom Whiteboard with AI Companion enhances team productivity by automating routine tasks, all while maintaining the flexibility needed for creative collaboration. Because AI Companion is integrated across Zoom Workplace, from Whiteboard to Canvas, your teams can pull in content from where they prefer to work seamlessly and save time during the critical early stages of brainstorming and ideation. With AI Companion powering various Zoom Whiteboard workflows, your teams need less training and onboarding to accomplish daily tasks than other platforms.

You can also reference existing whiteboard content in your AI Companion prompts: select specific canvas objects or include your entire board as context to get more relevant AI-generated results without leaving your whiteboard workflow.

Whiteboard integration for Zoom Rooms delivers seamless cross-device collaboration with centralized management

Zoom Rooms compatibility provides seamless integration with existing Zoom Rooms systems, allowing you to access whiteboarding features directly through touchscreen interfaces.

Zoom Whiteboard’s infrastructure accommodates a wide range of digital presentation devices and display technologies. The system works seamlessly with your touchscreen devices and interactive displays, while maintaining compatibility with your Zoom Rooms appliances and controllers. Stylus support provides greater precision for drawing and writing.

Collaborative whiteboarding is possible and enjoyable for both in-room participants and remote attendees, creating a unified experience regardless of location. See the support article Using Zoom Whiteboard in Zoom Rooms for more information on enabling Whiteboard use for Zoom Rooms. If you’re interested in Zoom Rooms for Touch, please see the support article Using a Zoom Rooms for Touch whiteboard for instructions specific to those setups.

Use the Zoom Admin Portal to manage users' Whiteboard-enabled devices

Device management capabilities are centralized through the Zoom Admin Portal, providing you with powerful tools for system oversight. This includes your ability to remotely configure and update Whiteboard-enabled devices across your organization. The platform features granular control over your access and permissions, which can be managed at both the account and group levels to enable appropriate security and functionality selections for your different user segments.

Administrators can access Whiteboard usage analytics and dashboards through the same Zoom Admin Portal interface for oversight of adoption and engagement trends.

Data classification labels offer enhanced management for Whiteboard Plus accounts

Admins can create and manage up to 30 custom data classification labels for all boards in a Zoom Whiteboard Plus organization. Each label includes:

• A sensitivity level and ranking

• A color-coded badge for visual identification

• A description

• An optional link to your organization's data handling guidelines

Classification badges are visible directly on boards in both dashboards and the canvas, so teams can quickly identify the sensitivity level of any whiteboard without opening it.

Board owners, co-owners, and admins with content edit permissions can apply labels through a dropdown in the board header. Admins can also set a default label that's automatically applied to all new boards, with a linked guidelines document for teams to review.

Participation Reports track engagements between participants and contributors

Whiteboard owners and co-owners can generate participation reports to track engagement across whiteboarding sessions. Reports are available through the board activity log and history.

Each report includes:

• Overview: Aggregate metrics including total participants, number of active contributors, and total whiteboard actions

• Participants: A per-user breakdown distinguishing active contributors (users who made changes) from view-only participants (users who opened the board without taking action)

• Analytics: A timeline view of usage trends with configurable sort options

Tracked actions include adding objects, editing content, commenting, deleting items, and reactions—each with timestamps. This gives board owners and co-owners a picture of who's contributing and how, without requiring a separate analytics tool.

Migration and Import

Migrate and import content between Zoom Whiteboard and other collaboration tools

Organizations using Lucidchart or Lucidspark can import their VSDX files directly into Zoom Whiteboard.

For Miro and Mural users, Zoom offers compatible API methods to transfer metadata—such as board ownership and collaborators—into an Amazon S3 bucket alongside PDF files of each board. Then, using Zoom’s APIs to create equivalent whiteboards, you can extract data from the exported PDFs and update board ownership and membership automatically.

The following export options are currently available in Zoom Whiteboard:

The following migration and import options are currently available in Zoom Whiteboard:

PDF import now supports uploads up to 100 MB from both the dashboard and the Zoom Whiteboard API.

Third-party import limitations

There are specific limitations to your Zoom Whiteboard imports. The current import limitation is 10 boards per upload, and each board must be 25 MB or less. Some unsupported object types may also be imported as static elements.

Additional resources and integration details

For more information about specific integrations, see the following support articles:

• See the Pexels image library support article

• See the Asana integration support article

Analytics and Insights

Monitor and analyze whiteboard usage and engagement

Administrators can access a Whiteboard Admin Dashboard through the Zoom Admin Portal to monitor usage metrics and engagement across their organization. The dashboard provides visibility into whiteboard creation rates, active collaborators, and overall engagement trends, enabling data-driven management of collaboration initiatives.

Track participation and activity metrics

Whiteboard engagement analytics show user participation patterns such as editing frequency, object creation, and team collaboration density. Administrators can export aggregate analytics data for deeper review or integrate it into internal reporting systems for productivity tracking.

Licensing

Zoom Whiteboard offers flexible licensing tiers

Zoom Whiteboard is offered in three license tiers: Whiteboard Basic, Whiteboard Unlimited, and Whiteboard Plus. Zoom Workplace plans include one of these Whiteboard tiers, and some customers can also purchase Whiteboard Plus as an add-on without changing their broader Zoom Workplace plan.

• Whiteboard Basic is the entry tier and has limited capabilities. It is included with Zoom Workplace Basic and Pro.

• Whiteboard Unlimited is the middle tier. It is included with Zoom Workplace Business, Business Plus, and Enterprise Essentials.

• Whiteboard Plus is the highest tier. It is included with Zoom Workplace Enterprise Plus and is also available as an add-on.

AI Companion features for Zoom Whiteboard are available with Whiteboard Unlimited, Whiteboard Plus, and Zoom Workplace Pro.

See our dedicated Whiteboard pricing page on the Zoom website to learn more about Zoom Whiteboard, Zoom Workplace, and which tiers offer AI Companion.

With Whiteboard Unlimited**, your teams won't run out of available canvases

Whiteboard Unlimited is the middle Whiteboard tier. It is a packaged inclusion with Zoom Workplace Business, Business Plus, and Enterprise Essentials licenses. This tier allows for unlimited whiteboard creation, subject to cloud storage capacity, and includes Zoom AI Companion features like content generation, summarization, version control, and more at no additional cost.

Whiteboard Plus can be purchased separately as an add-on, or bundled with Enterprise Plus licenses

Whiteboard Plus is the highest Whiteboard tier. For users requiring advanced functionality, it includes custom and organization-managed template and shape libraries, as well as third-party integrations with Jira, Asana, and Azure. These third-party integrations allow you to import task cards from your favorite project management tools and visualize them through Whiteboard’s infinite canvas and Kanban boards.

Whiteboard Plus is included with the Enterprise Plus license, or as an additional add-on purchase for other license tiers. Whiteboard Plus offers advanced diagramming functionality and collaboration features like advanced shape types and private mode. Enterprise licenses allow for flexible collaboration without automatic license assignment, as well as domain-based sharing controls for administrators. Zoom allows all users to edit whiteboards regardless of license status, providing greater collaboration flexibility.

Multiple license types can be applied to a user. Add-ons beyond Zoom Whiteboard include Zoom Phone, Zoom Revenue Accelerator, and more. See the support article Assigning Zoom licenses for more information on adding licenses to user accounts.

Administration and Security

Manage Zoom Whiteboard data, access controls, and deployment with enterprise-level administration capabilities

Zoom Whiteboard uses multi-layered security on Zoom-Managed Services. This protects whiteboard content across platforms. The system uses distributed data centers with region-specific storage. It includes SSO integration and domain-based access controls.

Organizations may require SSO authentication based on their security preferences. Organizations can set data residency options per their policies.

Account-specific settings implement administrative controls, enabling administrators to manage whiteboard creation, editing permissions, and sharing capabilities across their organization. This enables proper governance while maintaining flexibility for collaborative work.

Administrators get extensive control through meeting settings. They can set content retention policies and automated whiteboard lifecycle protocols. Admins can also restrict cross-organizational collaboration.

For AI Companion features, administrators can use the following designated controls to meter the level of AI usage and access:

• Organization-level configuration options

• Granular access controls for AI features

• Domain-based restrictions

• Custom usage policies per user group

• Integration with existing Zoom AI Companion features

Zoom encrypts whiteboard data in transit over the public internet and at rest within its product infrastructure

Zoom’s security architecture implements robust encryption and access controls across its platform. Zoom secures data connections over the public internet on the Zoom Workplace desktop and mobile apps using TLS 1.2 security protocols, and industry-standard encryption protects in-meeting traffic.

Within Zoom’s product environment, user meeting content is encrypted at rest, with access controls managed by account owners, administrators, and designated privileged users.

Customer Managed Key offers enhanced enterprise-grade security

Zoom Customer Managed Key (CMK) provides enhanced security capabilities for enterprise customers requiring stricter compliance and regulatory controls. This system allows you to maintain your own encryption keys through AWS to encrypt and decrypt your data and assets. This implementation works through Zoom's Whiteboard server (DAS), which interfaces with the CMK system to handle data encryption and storage operations.

When saving data, the DAS retrieves the document owner’s encryption key from CMK, encrypts the target data, and stores it in the destination storage. During data retrieval operations, the DAS gets the decryption key from CMK to decrypt the data as it is pulled from storage. This architecture allows you to maintain control over your encryption keys while enabling secure data handling within Zoom’s infrastructure.

Governance capabilities and data flow protections offer control, simplicity, and reassurance for Zoom Whiteboard content

Governance is another key feature of Zoom Whiteboard. Admins can enforce template-based publishing workflows and investigate comprehensive whiteboard metadata for root-cause analyses. Bulk operations also help content management activities.

Whiteboard data center regions set in the Zoom admin portal apply to Whiteboard content, as well.

Zoom Whiteboard's administrative framework provides comprehensive control and management capabilities for enterprise deployment. The system encompasses sophisticated meeting settings management coupled with configurable retention policies for automated whiteboard lifecycle management. Administrative controls extend to data residency options, which align with organizational Account Profile policies for content storage location management.

The platform offers extensive API integration capabilities, enabling custom solution development and integration with existing enterprise systems. Security features include customizable collaboration disclaimers and granular controls for cross-organizational collaboration restrictions.

Whiteboard projects are private until shared

Enterprise management tools for IT admins allow them to manage and control access to Zoom Whiteboard, including default sharing permissions like the ability to share a whiteboard with anyone who has an active Zoom account.

Whiteboard owners and admins can control who has access to and can see their whiteboards. By default, the creator, listed as the owner, is the only person who can access new whiteboards created outside meetings; these whiteboards are private. Owners can then invite additional editors, commenters, or viewers, and create links to share with their organization.

They can also transfer ownership of a whiteboard between users directly within the Zoom Workplace app.

Administrators can restrict Zoom Whiteboard access

Zoom administrators can selectively enable whiteboard access at the group and account levels, restricting feature access to approved users or groups.

Whiteboard admins can also:

• Enable or disable Zoom Whiteboard for in-meeting or out-of-meeting usage

• Enable or disable cloud storage for whiteboards

• Enable or disable the ability to export whiteboards to PNG or PDF

• Enable or disable the ability to share boards outside their organization