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Whiteboards enable teams to turn ideas into action, faster than ever before. Weaving together best-in-breed tools, whiteboards helps bring everyone across the organization openly collaborate, build, and innovate on tomorrow's problems - today.
Use whiteboards for any number of collaborative activities, such as:
Brainstorming ideas
Running retrospectives
Planning out and breaking down work for your team
Prioritizing what’s coming next
Creating diagrams and flowcharts
Take advantage of whiteboard's deep integrations with products like Jira when you’re next thinking of running a session in whiteboards. With one click, you’ll be able to:
Turn sticky notes into Jira issues
Visualize and create relationships between Jira issues
In this article
Finding whiteboards in Confluence
All whiteboards live within Confluence spaces. You can find your whiteboards via
Space content tree (formerly known as the page tree)
Space content view
Quick Search
Advanced Search
Recent activity
Recent menu in the navigation
Home page
Create a new whiteboard
There are two ways to create a whiteboard today in Confluence.
1. Hit the Create button in the navigation, and select ‘Whiteboard’. This will create a whiteboard in the space you are currently in, or will default to your personal space/whichever space you have edit permissions.
2. Or, hit the + button next to the Content section in the space sidebar, and select ‘Whiteboard’ to create a whiteboard in your space.
You can also create a whiteboard under a page/whiteboard using the + button that appears when hovering over the content’s title in the sidebar/
Create a whiteboard with a template
Upon creation, when you land in a whiteboard you will be prompted to select a template from our template picker.
Choose from a number of best-practice templates from the Atlassian Team Playbook to help you get started, fast.
Hover over a template in the template picker
Select Use template
To prevent this picker from showing on each whiteboard load, uncheck the box ‘Show when creating a whiteboard'.
Your whiteboard
The whiteboard is one infinite canvas to explore your ideas. All whiteboards will have a lined grid background.
Navigate back to your whiteboard in your space
Select from one of our best-practice templates to get started
Access whiteboard-specific tools such as sticky notes, text, lines, shapes, stickers, and stamps.
Use the floating toolbar to edit and annotate
Select Share to open the share modal for your whiteboard. Invite people, copy a link to the whiteboard, or update the share settings.
See who’s collaborating on your board
Add or remove whiteboard restrictions through the lock icon in the top navigation
Start a timer to stay on track by selecting the clock icon in the right hand side toolbar
Use zoom to adjust your view settings
View keyboard shortcuts
Give the whiteboard team feedback
What’s inside your toolbar?
What are the navigation tools?
Pan, zoom, and move around your whiteboard using navigation tools. Learn more about navigation
Use the cursor to select and move objects
Use the hand tool to pan and zoom
What are sticky notes?
Sticky notes in whiteboards are just the virtual equivalent to the sticky notes we all know and love. Use them to get down your thoughts and move them around the whiteboard to organize ideas or patterns.
Unlike paper sticky notes, whiteboard sticky notes can be as small or as big as you need to explore your ideas. Note: Sticky notes can only contain text and emojis. Learn more about sticky notes
Use sticky notes for:
Brainstorm sessions
Retrospectives
As cards in a ‘Card sorting’ exercise
Kanban boards, to-do lists, or project management
Anything you need to get out of your mind!
What are lines?
Use lines to create paths between sticky notes, text objects, or shapes. They’ll help you organize your whiteboard and create a flow of thought.
In whiteboards we have:
Straight lines
Dynamic lines
Lines can also be connectors between things. Learn more about lines and connectors
What is the text tool?
Use the text tool to create blocks of body text with titles and headings, or take down some quick ideas. Learn more about text
What are shapes?
Use a variety of shapes to build diagrams, mind maps, and flowcharts. You can add text to the shapes to note down thoughts and use connector lines to connect them. Learn more about shapes
What are stamps and stickers?
Sometimes, visualizing feedback and reactions can be more valuable than doing so with text. Use stamps and stickers to do this and at the same time bring your whiteboards to life.
Stamps are more granular representations of how someone feels about a specific idea, or piece of content on a board, etc. They're generally used to do things like vote on an idea or sticky note.
Stickers are more macro-level and are used to add a bit of fun to a board, replace a heading, or convey a feeling (not necessarily about a specific piece of content on the board).
What is the image tool?
Add life to your whiteboard using images. You can get the team to share photos from their favorite holiday as an icebreaker, add them to brainstorms, insert screenshots, or build vision boards. Learn more about images
How does linking work in whiteboards?
Add more context to your whiteboarding sessions using links. You can link to pages outside of whiteboards, Jira issues, Confluence pages, or to your favorite cloud apps and websites. Learn more about inserting links
Integrate whiteboards into your Atlassian workflow
At its core, whiteboards bridges the gap between where teams think and where teams do. Teams can think freely in whiteboards, and then act in Jira Software, Trello, and Confluence.
With whiteboards and the Atlassian platform, a click of a button turns their ideas into actionable projects and tasks.
Create Jira issues from whiteboards
Quickly turn sticky notes and shapes into single or multiple Jira issues - be it in Jira Software, Jira Work Management, or Jira Product Discovery. This will help take ideas in whiteboards and turn them into actionable work items in Jira. Learn more about creating issues in whiteboards
Import Jira issues
The Jira issue import modal lets you search for and insert single or multiple Jira issues into your whiteboard. You can use a simple plain text search or more advanced Jira Query Language (JQL) to find issues. It works for Jira Software, Jira Work Management, Jira Product Discovery, and Jira Service Management.
Embed your whiteboard into Jira, Confluence, and Trello
Easily embed ideas and add visualization to your workflows by embedding a whiteboard Smart Link to project posters, product roadmaps, kanban boards, and more. Learn more about Smart Links
Move ideas from your whiteboard into Jira and Confluence
If you’re not looking to showcase your entire whiteboard somewhere else, simply take the ideas you need or want with you to your other products. Be it after brainstorming, or a retro - get things happening by copying text, sticky notes, or shapes into a Confluence page or a Jira issue description. Learn more moving content from your whiteboard
Shortcuts
View whiteboard keyboard shortcuts in the shortcuts panel:
Click the question mark icon in the top right corner
Select Keyboard shortcuts and view all shortcuts