Open centralOS

Whiteboards

Whiteboards are an endless canvas for sketches, site plans, layouts, mood boards and brainstorms. The whole team can draw on the same board at once, and anything in centralOS can sit on it as a shortcut card or an image.

centralOS whiteboards are built on Excalidraw, the much-loved open-source whiteboard with the hand-drawn look. It's quick, friendly and a joy to use, and it's made in the open by the Excalidraw team and community on GitHub. We're big fans.

Start a whiteboard

  1. Open Whiteboards and press + (New whiteboard).
  2. Give it a name and press Create.
  3. Pick a tool from the toolbar at the top and start drawing.

It saves as you go.

Draw

The toolbar has rectangles, diamonds, circles, arrows, lines, freehand drawing, text, images and an eraser. Select anything to change its colour, fill, line style and font in the panel on the left.

  • Each tool has a key, such as R for a rectangle, A for an arrow, P to draw and T for text. Press ? for the full list.
  • Double-click anywhere to type.
  • Scroll to move around, and hold Cmd or Ctrl while scrolling to zoom.
  • Draw an arrow from one shape to another and it stays joined when either one moves.

Draw together

Whiteboards are live. When teammates open the same whiteboard, every change shows for everyone as it happens, along with each person's pointer and name. The whole team works on one plan as one, with no saving, refreshing or sending copies around.

  • Press K for the laser pointer to point things out while talking it through. Its trail fades, so nothing is drawn.
  • Moving around or zooming changes only your own view, and each board opens where you left it.

Put anything from centralOS on a board

Shortcut cards put records on the board: a contact or staff member, project, sale or purchase, event, compliance record, file, note or another whiteboard. Each card shows in its own colour, such as one for the client beside the plan of their deck.

  1. Press the @ button at the top right of the whiteboard, or press the @ key.
  2. Search for the record and pick it. The card appears in the middle of the board.
  3. To go to it, select the card and press Open under it.

Cards move, join with arrows and save as an image like any other shape.

Add photos and images

  1. Press the image button in the toolbar, or press 9.
  2. Pick one or more images from Files, or upload new ones.
  3. The images land on the board, ready to move and resize.

Photos pasted or dragged onto a board are saved to Files too, as "Whiteboard image".

A project's whiteboard

A project's page has a Whiteboard section for that job's sketches. Its menu picks the whiteboard to show, and has New whiteboard.

Things to know

  • To save a board as a picture, choose Export image... from the menu at the top left.
  • Move to bin sends a whiteboard to the Bin in the user menu, where it can be restored.
  • centralAgent can draw on whiteboards, such as "sketch a plan of the workflow on a whiteboard".