Sometimes we just don’t see the options we need to achieve something we desire. This is because we’re using the wrong tools, or simply trying to do it all individually when it would be much easier to collaborate with other team members or colleagues. That’s why brainstorming applications like Microsoft Teams are so beneficial—they enable everyone in a group to share their thoughts and ideas easily and improve their output.
“How do I get started with Microsoft organizational tools?” That’s a common question asked by small businesses. The virtual brainstorming tools are designed to help you organize your work, communicate more effectively, gain visibility into progress, improve team performance and use of time.
This blog is for people who’d like to get the most out of their office applications.
Microsoft Whiteboard
This is a native collaborative app from Microsoft where users can draw and brainstorm on a whiteboard. You can also add sticky notes, text, and captions. This is best for note-taking and showing diagrams during a meeting. This app is available for both the desktop and mobile versions of Microsoft Teams. Download it from this link.
Google Docs & Google Sheets
Google Docs, of which Google Sheets is a subset, is the modern scratch paper. The free collaborative web-based software makes it simple to upload a document, create a tracking table, and use all the other features with a team, sharing documents with each other and collecting edits.
Google Jamboard
Google Jamboard is a 55-inch 4k display with touchscreen capabilities. Built as a digital whiteboard for your office space, Jamboard enables users to sketch your ideas whiteboard-style while benefiting from the access and connectivity of an interactive canvas.
Users can easily drop images, add notes, and pull assets directly from the web while collaborating with team members from anywhere.
Jamboard unlocks your team’s creative potential with real-time co-authoring- whether your team is in the same room using multiple Jamboards, or across the world using the Jamboard app on mobile. As Jamboard is a part of the Gsuite, you can pull in work from Docs, Sheets, and Slides and even add photos stored in Drive to your Jamboard!
Slack
Slack is often viewed as a chat app, but its real value lies in its name: Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge. Originally built to develop a video game, Slack’s value is that it keeps your chats, shared documents, and links permanently, so you can just search for the item you need instead of having to ask someone to share it again.
MURAL
Similar to Microsoft Whiteboard, MURAL provides a canvas for participants to brainstorm and draw. Aside from the blank canvas, it has over a hundred templates to choose from and use. This canvas allows teams to think and collaborate visually, and is great for creating diagrams critical for design thinking. This app can also be added as a custom tab in channels for easy access. MURAL can even send a private chat message to notify you of invites and mentions in any other murals. Try it yourself through this link.
Crayon
If you are not looking for fancy whiteboard software and need something quick and easy to collaborate on, Crayon is the whiteboard app for you.
Just go to their website, enter your name and meeting room name, share the link with your co-worker, and voila! You’re in a live whiteboard session with your teammate! No need to install or download any software or lengthy sign-up processes.
Just like the Paint app on Windows, Crayon allows you to click and drag on the blank canvas to start drawing. You can also double-click anywhere to open a text box to type in. Crayon is one of the simplest digital whiteboards out there and is perfect for those quick and random brainstorming sessions.
Lucidchart
Lucidchart offers a nice solution to help ease the ideation process by allowing users to collaborate in real-time. It not only offers a basic whiteboarding tool for brainstorming, but it also allows users to create more advanced process mapping and systems design.
Miro
Miro is yet another online whiteboard platform ideal for team collaboration. This app can also boost real-time communication and exchange of ideas through a canvas that everyone can draw on. Right inside Teams, you can have a board for your team with notes, a timer, and polls. This can be integrated with Microsoft Teams meetings, calendars, custom tabs, and even a notification bot. With over 200 board templates, you can conceptualize and strategize visually wherever the participants are.
Witeboard
Following the trend of quick and easy-to-use whiteboard software, Whiteboard is similar in usage to Crayon but with some cool features. The biggest drawback of using a digital whiteboard instead of a physical one is the difficulty of drawing shapes and designs using a
mouse or a trackpad. Witeboard solves this problem via its “shape detection” feature which automatically turns your messy sketches into perfect circles and rectangles.
Some key features include:
- Witeboard also saves all the boards you have drawn on in your browser’s cache.
- Ability to turn the whiteboard into a blackboard.
- Change languages.
- Save your whiteboard sketches as an image.
Lucidspark
Lucidspark is unique in that it allows you to create breakout boards to ideate with specific users. This should help elevate team collaboration without the need to exit Teams or switch to a different application. Other intuitive features include infinite canvas, free handwriting, voting, a timer, containers, and templates.
Conceptboard
Not labeling itself as a simple whiteboard software, Conceptboard aims to become your collaborative workspace where teams from all departments can get together to get things done.
Whether you work in marketing, product development, strategy, or project planning, Conceptboard gives you the much-needed virtual space to collaborate and bring ideas together. Whether you’re working on product packaging or coordinating multiple projects, Conceptboard lets you speed up the review and approval process.
The ability to mark up files and add comments helps in gathering and compiling everyone’s feedback quickly. Inside the whiteboard, team members can add files, images, documents, screenshots, pin sticky notes and work in real-time so that everyone’s on the same page.
With ever-expanding whiteboards, you can add as much content as you want. When you are done with your work, you can safely share the link to your whiteboard with people inside and outside of your organization anywhere, anytime, on any device.
IdeaBoardz
If you like to organize your ideas in a tangible way, like with pushpins and note cards, IdeaBoardz translates that experience to a browser. It allows members of a group to make virtual sticky notes and place them under chosen categories. A Like button serves as an informal polling mechanism among teams, especially if you’re managing a big group; as likes collect, the more popular ideas stand out.
Freehand
Last on the list is Freehand. Like the above apps, this online whiteboard boasts an elevated hybrid Microsoft Teams meeting experience with real-time canvas and interactive boards. Like a few of the others, there are also templates available to help your team get started! The Freehand for Microsoft Teams integration is available on all plans–even free ones.
With these Microsoft Teams meeting apps, hybrid collaboration has now been taken to another level. These new features will surely add to your meeting experience and boost real-time communication and brainstorming whether in-office or at home. Some of these may need a subscription, but others offer free versions that can still be integrated with Microsoft Teams meetings. Check out these apps and see more tools from the Microsoft AppSource home.
Conclusion:
Have you ever tried virtual brainstorming tools? I mean, after all, it is easier to “write” on the screen with a pointer. The software is usually very similar or identical to regular whiteboard software, or it may go for the “digital whiteboard” approach with pictures, videos, and other multimedia elements. Basically, any type of brainstorming can be done more easily through these online tools.
