How to use Canva Whiteboards in team meetings

Better brainstorming at your fingertips

You’ve heard the saying teamwork makes the dream work, but did you know brainstorming makes teamwork work?

And thanks to Canva’s Whiteboards tool, efficient brainstorming and collaboration have never been easier. Let’s take a closer look at how to get started and build it into your team meetings.

Effortless online brainstorming

If you’re used to having a big whiteboard, markers, and sticky notes at your disposal for brainstorming sessions but need to facilitate online brainstorming sessions, hold onto your thinking hat.

Canva Whiteboards provides endless sticky notes and space for group work. And you can use or create a range of customized templates to create some structure, then develop and organize ideas on the fly.

How to set up a whiteboard

On the Canva homepage, search ‘whiteboards’ or click on the Whiteboards icon just below the search bar. You can create your own whiteboard from a blank template, or customize a template to save time. You can incorporate whiteboards into presentations, even expanding a slide into a whiteboard in a click. To learn more about whiteboards, check out our comprehensive video guide on using whiteboards in meetings⁠(opens in a new tab or window).

Giving clear direction

To make everyone feel empowered to share their ideas, try setting up a brainstorming station on your whiteboard with sticky notes. It’s important to add sharp instructions so expectations are clear and people can focus on ideating.

Let’s say we want participants to generate as many ideas as possible in under five minutes. We’ll ask them to aim for quantity over quality to encourage creativity and bold thinking. Then you can add a couple of sticky notes for them to get started. They can either copy and paste these or add more from the elements panel. You could even add “copy me” so it’s super clear what to do.

Sharing team ideas after the brainstorm

The best part of online brainstorming is how easy it is to share with everyone after the session. You can give your team direct access to the online whiteboard⁠(opens in a new tab or window), or collate the final ideas and share them separately. Explore our array of customizable online whiteboard templates including mind maps, kanban boards⁠(opens in a new tab or window), project scope, data flow diagrams⁠(opens in a new tab or window), and a lot more so you can tailor your online brainstorming sessions to suit your team's unique needs and workflow. Whatever you decide works best for your team, simply click ‘Share’ and either add their email address, or if they’re already set up in Canva just click the plus sign to add them, or copy the link to share on Slack or email.