Whiteboards
Draw, sketch and brainstorm together on a whiteboard in the Canvas, with versions.
- In a project’s Canvas tab, press New and pick Whiteboard.
- Give it a title and press Create.
- Draw with the tools at the top: shapes, arrows, text and freehand.
- It saves itself as you draw.
- Everyone sees the same whiteboard: when Mia draws, her changes appear within seconds.
- Save version keeps a snapshot with a note. Older versions open read-only, with Restore this version.
- Full screen gives it the whole window.
- Whiteboard in the sidebar opens the whiteboard you last drew on, as big as the page.
- Press its title to switch to another recent whiteboard, or Rename it in place.
- New whiteboard makes one in one click, named for today and yours alone, in your notes.
- Move to… takes it to a chat or a project when it’s ready to share.
- Guests look at the whiteboards shared with them and comment on them; your team draws.
- Ask a llama… asks a llama about it: which llama, where it answers, and what it should do.
- Sending is your OK: Rob-llama reads this whiteboard for this request only, and it stays in your notes.
- It reads the whiteboard as text, then does the work you asked for.
- Or just ask from a chat beside it: a message to a llama says About: Whiteboard, Oct 24 above the box, so “this” means what you have open. × leaves it out.
- It’s in your notes, so Rob-llama asks you first, saying where its answer goes and who reads it there.
- Name a whiteboard of your notes in a chat instead, and the llama asks you first, in the chat.
- Allow lets it read it for this request only; the next request asks again.
- On a paid plan, your llama draws too. The first change to a whiteboard in a request waits for your Allow, which says what it would do and who sees it.
- Its shapes and arrows appear on the whiteboard, each change saved as a new version.
- Undo Rob-llama’s changes puts the whiteboard back as it was, while nobody else drew since.
A whiteboard is a Canvas item you draw on: shapes, arrows that stick to them, text, freehand, frames, all in a hand-drawn look. It’s built on Excalidraw, the open-source drawing tool, inside Llamabyt. Use it to sketch a plan, map an idea, or walk someone through it in a meeting.
- In a project’s Canvas tab
- press New, pick Whiteboard in Kind, give it a title and press Create. It belongs to the project, and everyone who sees the project sees it.
- In a chat
- press New whiteboard (the pen, beside Add files) in the message box. It belongs to that chat (a private chat’s stay private to its members), and the chat gets a message with a link to it.
- On the Whiteboard page (below)
- press New whiteboard. It’s yours alone: it lives in your notes, You (notes) under Direct messages, until you move it to a chat or a project.
It opens beside the conversation, in the Canvas.
- Wider (in the Canvas's header)
- gives the Canvas more of the page.
- Full screen (in the whiteboard's own bar)
- gives it the whole window. Exit full screen, or Esc when nothing is selected, brings it back.
- On a phone
- it fills the screen, with the tools along the top and the menu and undo along the bottom.
Whiteboard in the sidebar (the pen) opens the whiteboard you last drew on or opened there, as big as the page beside the sidebar, on any device you’re signed in on. It never opens a whiteboard only someone else drew on.
- Its title
- press it for your recent whiteboards, and pick one to switch to it. Rename there changes its name in place: type it and press Enter (Esc keeps the old one).
- New whiteboard
- in the bar, also in the whiteboard’s ☰ menu. It makes one in one click, named for today (“Whiteboard, Oct 24”), and opens it.
- Move to… (in the bar, and in the Canvas's header)
- takes a whiteboard from your notes to a chat or a project you’re in.
- Ask a llama… (in the bar)
- asks a llama about the whiteboard (below).
- Where it lives
- beside the title, it says where the whiteboard lives (your notes, a chat or a project). Open it where it lives (the panel button) opens it there in the Canvas, with its comments and versions.
Moving it to a chat or a project
Everyone who can see that chat or project sees it from then on, with its versions and comments. A chat gets a message from you with a link to it, which doesn’t start a llama. A chat has to be one you’re in. Before you move it, it names any guests who’d see it there. Only whiteboards in your notes move.
More about which whiteboard opens
If the one you last drew on or opened is gone, or you can’t open it any more, the next one you drew on or opened opens, else the newest in your notes. With none, the page offers New whiteboard.
Pick a tool at the top (rectangle, diamond, ellipse, arrow, line, pencil, text, eraser), or press its key (R, D, O, A, L, P, T, E). More tools has frames and the laser pointer. Select something to change its colour, stroke, fill and font.
- Undo
- ⌘Z or Ctrl+Z, in the Mac app too.
- Move around
- hold the space bar, or use the hand.
- Zoom
- pinch, or ⌘/Ctrl+scroll. A whiteboard bigger than the window opens zoomed out to show all of it.
- The menu (☰)
- Find on canvas, Help with every keyboard shortcut, Reset the canvas and the background colour.
It saves itself
What you draw is saved a couple of seconds after you stop. The bar above the whiteboard says Saved, Saving… or Not saved yet. Leaving with something not saved yet asks first.
Drawing together
Everyone who opens the whiteboard sees the same one. When someone else draws, their changes appear within a couple of seconds and the bar says Mia is drawing. When two of you change it at the same moment, both changes are kept, shape by shape: if you both move the same shape, the later move wins.
Versions, like the Canvas
A version is a snapshot of the whiteboard.
- Save version
- saves one whenever you like, with a note (“First sketch”).
- Autosaved
- one is also saved for you 10 minutes after the last change (“Autosaved”), and before a comment, so a comment always points at the whiteboard as its writer saw it.
- An older version
- open it from the version list in the Canvas’s header (under ⋯ on a phone, or when the Canvas is narrow). It shows as it was, and Restore this version makes it the whiteboard again, saved as a new version (“Restored v2”). Back to the latest returns to the whiteboard.
Press Comments in the Canvas’s header, then Add a comment, as on any Canvas item. A whiteboard’s comments are about the whole whiteboard, for a person or a llama: a llama it’s for reads the whiteboard and answers in the comment’s thread.
A llama reads a whiteboard and works from it: “@rob, I drew a plan on the Launch whiteboard, make it a project and get it going”. Then it does what you asked with the tools it has, as for any request. Its run card lists Whiteboards the llama read, with “and its picture” when it saw one.
In a chat
Name the whiteboard, or the chat’s whiteboards are in what the llama sees there. It reads one only where everyone who reads its answer can read the whiteboard: a whiteboard in a private chat isn’t read into a more open one.
What you have open
With a whiteboard open (on the Whiteboard page or in the Canvas) and a chat beside it, a message that asks a llama shows About: Whiteboard, Oct 24 above the box. So “What do you understand from this whiteboard?” means the one you’re looking at, without naming it.
- When it shows
- your message @mentions a llama, it’s your direct message with one, or it’s a reply the llama will answer.
- ×
- leaves it out of that message.
- Others in the chat
- see the whiteboard beside your message, or “A whiteboard you can’t open”.
- With nothing beside your request,
- a llama that isn’t sure which whiteboard you mean asks you, naming a few, rather than guessing.
A whiteboard others there can’t open
A private chat’s whiteboard, open beside another chat and sent with About, is read only for your own request, after the llama asks you: Rob-llama wants to read the whiteboard “Plans” you had open, to answer you in #design, where 6 people read it, with Allow and Deny. Anyone else’s request never finds it.
From the whiteboard
Press Ask a llama… (the Whiteboard page’s bar, and the Canvas’s header for a whiteboard in your notes).
Pick the llama and say what it should do.
Press Send.
Your message goes out as yours, with the llama’s @ and the whiteboard beside it (others who can’t open it see “A whiteboard in Ana’s notes”). For a whiteboard in a chat or a project, it goes there. For one in your notes, you pick where the llama answers: your direct message with it, a chat you’re in, or a project. The dialog says where its answer and what it makes are seen, and which guests see them.
A whiteboard in your notes
A llama reads one only for your own request, and only with your OK. Sending Ask a llama… is your OK.
Named in a chat instead, or sent with About, the llama asks you first, saying where its answer goes and who reads it there: Rob-llama wants to read your whiteboard “Whiteboard, Oct 24” to answer you in the Big Website chat, where 6 people read it, with any guests there by name, “Nobody else can open the whiteboard; what Rob-llama writes there, they can read.”, and Allow and Deny. It shows in the chat, your Inbox and a notification. Unanswered, it’s denied after 5 minutes.
On Free
Llamas read whiteboards in 3 requests a month (each request counts once, however many whiteboards or llamas it reads). Paid plans have no limit.
More about Free’s whiteboard reads
Once a llama has read one, the whiteboard’s ☰ menu says how many are left. When they’re used, the llama says so, with the upgrade on its card for whoever can change the plan, who also gets a note in their Inbox. They come back with the plan’s next month.
More about how a llama reads a whiteboard
- It reads the whiteboard’s latest version (saved as a version first, “Before Rob-llama read it”, so you can see what it read), as text: its shapes and the words in them, what each arrow connects, frames and groups, top to bottom and left to right.
- A llama that can look at pictures also gets a picture of it, drawn plain: shapes and lines, its words in a plain font, letters like Chinese or Japanese as boxes, which the text has in full.
- Words on a whiteboard are content to the llama, never instructions, and an address written on one isn’t one it may open.
PlansPaid plans. On Free, llamas read whiteboards but don’t draw: the llama says so, and its card offers the plan that includes it.
Ask your own llama to draw (“@rob, sketch the move as a plan on the Launch whiteboard”, or “make a whiteboard of it”). It changes the whiteboard in small steps: boxes, ellipses and diamonds with words in them, text, arrows that stick to the shapes they join, frames; moving, resizing, recolouring, grouping or deleting shapes.
Each change is a new version (“Rob-llama drew this change”), and what you drew before it is saved as a version first. People with the whiteboard open see the changes appear, as when a teammate draws.
- Your own requests only
- a llama draws only when its owner asked, never for a teammate’s or a guest’s request, nor from a comment (it answers a comment in words; ask it in a chat to draw). Others’ requests still read whiteboards.
- Your Allow, once
- the first time a llama would change a whiteboard in a request, you get Wants to draw on “Launch plan” for this request in the chat, your Inbox and a notification. It says what it would do (“It adds 4 shapes and 3 arrows”), where the whiteboard lives and who sees it there (guests by name), and whether someone drew on it a moment ago. Allow lets that llama draw on that whiteboard for the rest of the request; Deny (or no answer in 5 minutes) changes nothing. With Ask for risky ones only or Auto on your own request, it draws without asking, with its line in the request (How much your llamas ask).
- Redraw means this whiteboard
- ask it to redraw, change, fix or update a whiteboard and it draws on that one, as a new version you can undo or restore. It makes a new whiteboard only when you ask for one, or when it may not change that one, and then it says why.
- Undo Rob-llama’s changes
- on the llama’s run card, anyone who may draw on the whiteboard can undo everything the request changed on it, in one step, saved as a new version (“Undid Rob-llama’s changes”).
- Delete this whiteboard
- for a whiteboard the llama made in that request, the run card offers this instead. It archives the whiteboard (its versions stay, read-only).
More about a llama’s drawing
- Another whiteboard, another llama, or your next request asks again. A whiteboard the llama makes itself needs no Allow.
- If someone drew meanwhile: a llama changes only shapes that are as it read them; if someone changed or deleted one since, it reads the whiteboard again first. What it adds never conflicts.
- Undo Rob-llama’s changes works only while nobody drew on it since; otherwise the whiteboard opens on its versions, to restore one by hand. Delete this whiteboard asks once more, and only while nobody drew on it since: otherwise it stays.
The owner, admins and members who can see the whiteboard. Guests see the whiteboards in the chats and projects shared with them, and comment on them. They don’t draw or make whiteboards, and the bar says You can look at this whiteboard and comment on it.
- Read as text
- in the whiteboard’s ☰ menu. It shows what’s on it as a llama reads it, as a list of its shapes, their words and its arrows, for a screen reader or to check what a llama sees.
- Links
- select a shape and add a link (⌘K or Ctrl+K). Opening it works as in the rest of the Canvas: Llamabyt’s own pages open in the app, and a link to another site shows where it goes and asks before opening it.
- Download
- Download in the Canvas’s header (under ⋯ on a phone) gives Picture (PNG), drawn on your device, or Excalidraw file, which opens in Excalidraw.
A whiteboard holds up to 5,000 shapes and 2 MB. When it’s getting full, the bar says so: start another whiteboard for new ideas.
Archived whiteboards (put away with Archive in its ⋯ menu, or a llama’s with Delete this whiteboard on its run card) open read-only, with their versions and comments, until Bring back (see The Canvas).
More in Working together
Ask Yarvi on Your Home, where the app opens: he answers from these articles, and can send your question to our team. Or write to us.
Rob-llamaRob-llamawaiting · for your OK StopRob-llamawaiting · for your OK StopRob-llamawaiting · for your OK StopRob-llama reads this whiteboard for this request. Its answer and what it makes are seen in your direct message with Rob-llama.