Streamline product team collaboration with Aha! Whiteboards.
30 expert tips for using virtual whiteboards
Do you think in words or pictures? People's initial thoughts often start as verbal or visual depending on what they are thinking about. Studies have found that most people favor one over the other — and that it can be tough to switch modes. Regardless of which way you gravitate, there are some simple ways to enhance how you share information.
With a few easy tips, jumping into a visual tool like a whiteboard can feel as natural as starting a conversation.
Product managers are expert communicators. Between customer interviews, team meetings, and stakeholder presentations, you handle important conversations regularly. This shows up in your ability to define feature requirements and write clear product documentation. Sharing plans? You build a release roadmap or product dashboard. Now, what about a mockup or diagram on a whiteboard? This is where some folks hesitate — particularly if you are not familiar with whiteboarding tools.
But it is easy to learn a new tool like Aha! Whiteboards. And getting going is highly rewarding once you shape and share concepts in ways that words alone cannot.
Aha! Whiteboards can do much more for product managers than sticky note-based brainstorming. There is a lot hiding under that blank canvas.
For example, let's consider feature prioritization. A ranked list of features works pretty well — we use the Prioritization page in Aha! Roadmaps often. But if we need to be more exploratory and less structured, pulling features onto a whiteboard and evaluating them on a matrix is really useful. The same goes for building a customer journey map or working through a complex decision. It is easier to make sense of complexity when relationships among parts are displayed visually.
Plus, once you get the hang of it, whiteboards are delightful to use. There is something so satisfying about seeing scattered shapes snap into place or smartly color-coding jobs to be done. This is why we keep adding new ways to interact with Aha! Whiteboards — we want you to be able to whiteboard things you had no idea you could.
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In that spirit, we rounded up our favorite whiteboarding tips. Many of them are small, but mighty — making your visuals more professional-looking and saving you a few clicks along the way. Jump ahead to discover something new:
Navigate
1. Zoom in and out on a whiteboard by holding Command or Control while scrolling.
2. No need to toggle over to the hand icon in the navigation toolbar — get around quickly by holding right-click or the space bar to pan.
3. Right-click, then select Copy link to object. This gives you a link that opens your whiteboard zoomed into that spot — perfect for when you have a ton of content on your board and need to pinpoint a specific shape or comment.
4. Frames are your friends. Create them to organize content, then quickly jump between them with the less than (<) and greater than (>) keys.
Keep things neat and navigable with frames on your whiteboard.
Accelerate
5. Auto-sticky your notes. Paste any text into empty space on a whiteboard, and it will automatically populate in a sticky note.
6. For faster duplication, select a shape or a sticky note, then hover your cursor over one of the dots along its border and click the + icon. (Command or Control + D also works.)
7. When you are short on time, try keyboard shortcuts.
8. Select multiple objects, then change their style or color all at once by editing in bulk. You can even filter which shapes you want to change in your selection.
9. Use a template. We have more than 100 of them.
10. Use more templates — you can insert the same one multiple times, or multiple different templates on the same whiteboard.
Right-click when you have multiple objects selected in Aha! Whiteboards to group or align them, bulk edit, and more.
Format
11. Link objects together with connectors — smooth, straight, angled, up to you. Everything will stay connected, even if you move them later.
12. For a quick way to organize work, insert a table. (Yes — a real, responsive table. Not just a bunch of rectangles.) Add rows and columns, merge cells, and change the dimensions until it is just right.
13. Save time on timelines. Add this custom shape with your own dates, or select the pre-set windows. You can adjust the timeline increments to be Quarters, Months, Weeks, or Days in a couple clicks.
14. Add a progress bar to show (you guessed it) your progress. Drag the handle below the progress bar to adjust the fill.