Miro board fundamentals: watch before you buy!

1. Introduction: We're going to start from the basics like templates, sticky notes, or inking tools, and then move to all advanced features like frames and presentation mode, comments, voting, app integrations and much, much more. Mirror has a free plan that is limited to three whiteboards that includes all the features that you're going to see in this video. So why not sign up for a free plan and practice as you watch the video? So let's get started. 2. Miro Dashboard: Mirror, so rich in features. But before we create a new whiteboard and start exploring them, I think it's important to get an understanding of the dashboard, how it works, how it is organized, and how teams can collaborate. The first thing we see is obviously the create a board section. We'll look at the details of it in a second. Below we find that the boards in this team section with a collection of all the boards that were created in a team. A team is workspace where different collaborators can work together. With the top left we see in which team we're currently working. If you have other people with the team license, you can invite them to collaborate to your team. Within a team, you can create projects, projects, let you organize boards into categories. In the project, have the same access to every board. Let's create a new project and call it mirror tutorial. Can add members to the project and also add existing boards. She want everybody in your team to automatically have access to this project. Then you can toggle this button. At the top right. I can upgrade to the next year in that new members to my Team, Explorer, that guide. By the way, that's really useful if you're starting with meter and there's the feed icon. Let's go back to the initial view and start exploring what you're here for. It is the mirror board. If you're seeing it for the first time, don't worry, I'll guide you step-by-step. But if you already have some experience, you'll find a lot of useful content too, as we'll be exploring all of the advanced features. 3. Templates and Miroverse: We may create a board for different purposes, like a brainstorming activity, a Design Sprint, Retrospective, a project update. But where can we start from? Nero templates are here to help us. Whatever you want to do, you'll probably find a template that suits you and that will make your life easier. But if you really want to go fancy, then there is a huge universe to explore. Here you can see a list of the recommended templates. These are mirror own templates that have been essential graphic are simple and very clear. By clicking on the link at the right of the dashboard, it'll be offered with hundreds of templates. You can search by name, category, or company. You can even create and save your own templates and share it with other people. And if these templates are not enough, then you can explore even more. The mirror users community is called mirror others. Here you'll find all the templates that are added by the users. Let's go back and I'll open the category meetings and workshops. I'm interested in this project kickoff template. 4. Select, group, lock, hide objects: It's now time to start working on the board. I use the project kickoff template will show you all the features. You find the basic tools in this left bar. The first one is the select tool. If we click on it than the mouse arrow will appear. And by clicking and dragging, we can select multiple objects at once. Here we learned that we've selected 22 objects with a breakdown by object type, objects can be aligned or distributed horizontally or vertically. We then have the option to lock the selection. Now, if I click on it, I can't select it or move it anymore. With a single click, then this bar will appear again in to unlock the selection would just have two long price. This electron can also be hidden. And by clicking on the three dots, we have access to a number of options based style or formatting is not available for this election. Luck, which does the same thing as the log button we've just seen. So let's unlock it, copy and do Control V. Now we have an exact same editable copy of the content. Let's go to the last option which is delete. We can also copy as image. The image can be replaced with another one, downloaded, cropped, locked. I don't need this image, so let me delete it. 5. Board navigation and view: If we want to move on the board, we have to deselect the selection tool, click and hold the right mouse key, the hand icon will appear. And by clicking, we can move the board with the mass. Well, we can zoom in and out or do the same by using the plus and minus buttons. We can also fit the whole content to screen and decide whether we want to display the map. The map is very useful. If we have a board full of content, the map will help us understand where we are positioned on the board. And let me fit the screen again. The second icon is templates. If you click on it, you'll be brought to the same page that we've seen before opening the board. 6. Text: The third tool is the text one. Let's zoom into the icebreaker section of the template and I'll add a title to this activity. So first thing, let's make the text larger. We can do it by increasing the size here and also by dragging the handles. What can we do with text? With the first icon, we can actually switch type so we can transform text into something else, like sticky notes, shapes. Let's go back to text. We can change the font. We can make it bold, italic, underlined, or strike through a line and do a bullet or ordered list, we can insert a link, e.g. I. Can add the link to my website. Now the tax will get the hyperlink for Martin. Now if I click on it, the length displays and my website opens in a new tab, let me remove the link formatting. We can change the color. To do that, we have to highlight the part of the text that we want to format. There are 16 predefined colors, but if you click on plus, you can choose your own colors. There's also a color picker to make your life easier. So I'll pick this color. The next option is the highlighter. And again, we have predefined colors that we can choose our own ones. Let's select this text and highlighted in light blue. We can also select the background color like this, purple, and also choose the opacity text as all other objects can be locked. 7. Link objects and Frames: By clicking on the three dots, many new other options appear. Some are self-explanatory, but some others are more special. And it explanation. The first one I want to make you aware of our Copy link and link to objects can be linked. And let's see what that means. So let me copy the link of this object. Now, let's select another object, e.g. the instruction one, I click on the three dots and then click on link to here. I'll paste the link that I've just coping is more arrow will appear here at the top corner. It indicates that this object is linked to another one. Now, if I click on the arrow, be brought to the object that it's linked to and mirror will automatically zoom into it. That's useful if you want to show a process. Or it's also nice way to present content where you can decide your workflow in advance. And that led me to do the job while you're presenting. Let's go back to the other options. By clicking on info, we can see who's created the object and whose Last-Modified it, Bring to Front, Send to Back, copy, copy as image, duplicate our self-explanatory and we can export the object to CSV. And then we have two other interesting options, create frame and Save as Template. Create frame will create a frame around the object. By default, it takes the shape and dimensions of the object, or we can change it to other formats, like 16 by nine or a browser frame. Frames are basically shapes that I see them as pages, kind of slides if you're used to PowerPoint. So basically a container where you can put some content on. Let's say that we've created an object or a group of objects that we want to reuse in the future. We can do that by clicking on Save as Template, give it a name like tax template, decide whether this template is personal or shared with the team. And then save it. 8. Sticky notes, tags and reactions: The next tool is sticky note. Sticky notes can be added one-by-one or embark mode to add multiple sticky notes at once. You can type the text here or you can import notes from a spreadsheet. We already have sticky notes on the template, so let's use this one's in the icebreaker. Participants are asked to describe their communication style that work in style, teamwork and feedback. I have to do that by adding taxed on a sticky note and then place it on the board. Let's do that for communication. I'll take the first sticky note, place it here and double-click on it. And the right, open and direct for our communication style, what formatting options do we have for sticky nodes, as we've seen for text, we can switch the type, we can choose the font style. And here we have two styles. The one that you're seeing right now and the handwriting. We can increase the size of the font. And then we have the same formatting options as we so forth taxed, including the option to add a link to the sticky note object. Sticky notes can be resized by drag-and-drop. But if we want to keep a standard size across the board, then we can choose three predefined sizes, S, M, and now we can change the color. And here we see a new feature that is add Taq. So if we have a common theme across multiple sticky notes, and later on we want to search or group the sticky notes belonging to that theme. Then we can add a tag, e.g. here, I'll add communication as a tag and if needed, we can even add multiple tags as soon as we inserted, the tag will appear at the bottom of the sticky note. This is a task that you can ask your participants to do or as a facilitator, when you review the work of the participants, you can create a tax on the go and discuss with them which sticky note belongs to which tag. The next option that was not available for texts is add a margin where you have access to all your WhatsApp emojis. The images will appear at the bottom of the sticky note, together with the reaction count, multiple images can be added and account will appear for each of them. We have the lock option and then by clicking on the three dots, we have access to all the options that we are ready so forth taxed by default, sticky notes have a square shape, but we can also make them rectangular. Let's now add some information for the other icebreaker topics. 9. Share and collaborate: I'm still alone on the board. So let me also join as a participant, and I'll take this occasion to test the mobile experience, to add participants, go to the top right and click on Share. Here we have the chance to enter name, e-mail, or invite from Slack or Gmail, invite someone to the board and also to the team. Then decide what people in my team can do. And then decide what people outside of the team can do. So if one has the link, can they view, command, edit, or have no access? So I'll change this to can add it and I set an access password. We can further define the sharing settings on the board owner and currently any member in my team can edit this board. Let's check the permissions. We can decide who can share this board, who can cope with the board content, and who can add visitor names if board is public. So let's copy the board link and send it to me. Now joined from my mobile app with another free account, participants are displayed here at the top. Here we see myself as a board Bonner. And here the new account that has joined with editor writes mirror tells you where other participants are on the board. Now my other account is on this part of the board that if my mobile, I moved to the right and I am outside of the window than meter will show the direction where my second account is. So I can always pan, move until I found it. If many participants are on the board, then things can become a bit messy with all the cursor is displayed here at the top, you can decide to hide collaborators cursor like this. I will now provide my input from the mobile to the icebreaker activity. 10. Shapes and connectors: The next tool is shape. There are nine pre-defined shapes. But if you click on All shapes than a huge list will appear, you have basic shapes, flowchart. You can even change color, call-outs, connectors. And if you're not satisfied, you even have more shapes. However, this extra ones are only available to business, enterprise and consultant plantains. Let's add a cloud shape. In a shape, we can add text with a usual formatting options. In addition, we have a couple of other options. The first one is border style, opacity and color. We can change the style of the border, thickness, the opacity, the color. Next, we can also set the color and opacity of the fail, then lock and the other options as usual. In other option is connectors. Let's say I want to connect these four boxes. I can take one of the three connector types and connect the different objects. Now if I move the boxes around, the connectors will stick to them. Connectors have their own formatting options. Learn start line and you can swap them. Choose the type, the color. We can insert a shape in the connector. But to do that, we need to increase the space. Like a star or taxed. Instead of adding text as a shape, we can also add it in a different way. We can change the position, the color, size, etc. Connectors can be accessed from the shape tool, but there's an even straightaway, which is the tool exactly underneath. Here we find the line arrow, curved arrow, and an extra arrow type. There is quite nice. 11. Pen and highlighter: The next group of tools are the inking tools. Here we find the pen highlighter, smart drawing, eraser, and the lasso tool. You can save up to three predefined pen thicknesses and colors. For direct access, you can choose the thickness and the color, one of the predefined ones, or a custom one. I will now write and draw with a Wacom tablet and stylers to let you appreciate the drawing experience. The second inking tool is the highlighter. We can save up to three highlighting colors and they use is self-explanatory. Let me use it to beautify what I've just written. 12. Smart drawing: The next tool in the Inking tab is smart drawing. This is a feature that only few whiteboards author mirror actually takes it to the next level. With smart object feature enabled, you can draw by hand a shape either with a stylus, but it works while also with the mouse and mirror will recognize it and beautified. It works with eight different shapes. But what's interesting is that it also works with sticky notes, connection lines, and erase, let's say an example. It works very well with shapes and let's not try to create a sticky note. The black one. Now let's say I've drawn something that I don't like. I can erase it by scribbling on it. Speaking of which, let's move to the next feature. That is the eraser. With the eraser, we can delete inked content. So if I use it on my drawing, we can see that full strokes are raised. So small limitation is that we cannot erase pixel by pixel. The last tool of this tab is the lasso. Lasso is used to select multiple objects. We get some useful information like the number of objects that are in the selection, as well as the object type. We can lock the selected objects and then have access to the usual options. 13. Comments: Next feature is comments. Comments can be placed anywhere on the board. If I place it on a sticky note, it will be automatically linked to it. And the same applies if I place it on any other object. If we want to draw the attention of the specific collaborator, we can mention them by using the add key. Reactions can also be added to the comment. And then we submit the comment and the new set of options appear. By clicking on resolve, we will close the discussion. We can change the color of the connector and we can decide whether we want to follow or unfollowed the discussion. The right collaborators can leave a reply. So there can be a whole discussion around this comment. Reactions can be added to each comment and to each reply. And the reaction count will appear at the bottom of the comment by clicking on the three dots, we have another option to follow or unfollow the thread to pin the comment, to copy the link if we want to link it to another object, or we can delete it. If we move the comment around, the connector will keep it linked to the shape. 14. Frames (continued): The next feature is frame. Frames are basically shapes we can use as background to frame some content. We can use a custom size rectangle, A4 letter, and the series of other formats. There are also three useful shapes, like phone, tablet and browser. In the existing template, we already have some frames like this white background. This is a custom racial frame. We can change the background color. Locket, hide all the content that is in the frame and the usual options. So frames work as a container and if you need to present something on mirror, then you could see them as slides. 15. Upload files: The next feature is upload. You can upload files from your device via URL, saved files, web clipper, and more options. The first two options are self-explanatory. By the way, this is the thumbnail on a tutorial on how to do this as zoom-in, zoom-out. The fact that I'm using for this tutorial, if needed, we can replace the image, download it, or crop it, and all the other usual options. Another option to upload images is to use Web Clipper. It's an extension for Google Chrome that allows you to drag and drop files to the board and save website screenshots to your library. 16. Apps integration: We almost got to the end of this panel. Is that all? Well, actually that's just the beginning. If we click on More tools, we have access to many more apps. And if you work with third-party tools, you can go to get more apps because mirror integrates with most of the productivity tools like Google Calendar or Jira, air table, Figma, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Asana, and many apps that are specific to the industry urine. So let me make some space and show you very quickly basic use of this apps. You can paste an IFrame code, e.g. the embed code of a YouTube video. If I click on it than the video worth laid directly in the board, you can insert a webpage capture. I've inserted my web page URL, and now my web page will be displayed on the whiteboard. There's the icon finder application where you can find many icons. The next feature is stickies capture. It allows you to upload an image and select parts of it that you can then add to the board. The next feature is a very powerful one, and it's wireframe library. It's very useful if you need to do a software mock-up, e.g. you have components and icons. So let's say we start from a component and we insert a phone. We can hide the device or show it, and then place it in portrait or landscape mode. With the other components, we can start populating the device. So let's add a search bar, and let's insert an avatar, change its color to blue. And then let's add a drop-down menu, e.g. it can change its state from normal to forecast error or disabled. And then we can enrich the content with icons. Now, if we move around the phone frame, all other components that we've added will move with it automatically. The phone is working as a frame. So if we toggle the icon, we will hide for now all the content that is within the frame. The next feature is charts. There are four different types of charts where we can edit the chart, title, description, legend, and then horizontal axis, title, and series values. We can also add additional series. The following option is mind-map. The following feature is card. This is very useful if you're working in a project and you want to assign a task with a certain deadline to a collaborator. The next option is Kanban. We can insert tables. Tables are made of cells where we can add a text, but also objects. Everything that we've put in a table will automatically stick to it. If we move, it says can be formatted, rows and columns can be rearranged, merged, and most of the options that we're used to when we work with tables in other software. Then there's diagramming that basically brings us back the shapes that we've seen at the beginning of the tutorial. And the last option is stickers and emojis. These are very nice to make your board a little bit more playful. 17. In meeting: Presentation mode: When you're done with the preparation of the skeleton of the board, is now time to share it with your collaborators and get work done. We've already seen the sharing options at the beginning of this tutorial. So if you miss that part, Let's go back to the corresponding chapter and now connect again with the second account from my mobile. Here's my cursor, and this is my participant icon. Let's now say I want to introduce the content that is on the board and the work that we'll be doing as a team, one option you have is to go into presentation mode. The presentation mode takes all the frames and shows them full screen. It's like working with a slideshow and you can navigate through the content with the arrows at the bottom. This is a good occasion for me to show you the sidebar. Here you'll find three options. A list of all the frames in your whiteboard. Here you can change the order of the frames. That will be the order of the slides that will be shown in presentation mode, a list of all comments, and then a board history with a log of all activities that were done. 18. In meeting: Timer: After you've introduced the activities, is now time to do them. Say we're starting from the icebreaker. You'll ask participants to use the sticky notes and put their styles on the board, like we did earlier in this tutorial, we are allowing 3 min to participants to give their input for time for activities. That dimer tool is very handy. Let's pick 3 min here. You can even pick some background music to play during the countdown. And then let's start the timer. If you realize that participants need some extra time, you can always add it here at the end of an activity. And that's very useful if you're doing e.g. at brainstorming, you may want to run a voting session. Say you end up with 50 ideas on the board and you want to identify the five best, resonate with your team. You'll find the voting option close to the timer here you can assign the number of votes that each participant has, let's say five. The number of minutes that the voting session will last, let's add 1 min. Then you can decide whether the participant can give only one vote per object or assign multiple votes to one object. We're going to also decide which objects participants can vote on. The other setting is devoting area. If you're working on a large complex board, you may want to limit the voting options to the objects that are contained in a specific area. So say we want to do a voting on this icebreaker activity, then I'll include all the sticky notes that are present in this frame. If I now make it smaller than I'll have less object to vote on. When ready, click on Start. Votes are anonymous and you can join voting also as a board owner. At the top I can see how much time I have left and how many votes are left. So I'll give two votes to this idea. Two votes to this, one, one vote to this. If I change my mind, I can reduce the number of votes to an idea and then give my vote to something else. At the end of the session, mirror will prepare the results and we'll display the top ones. If we wanted to see our results, just click here. If you need to go back to voting results at a later stage, you'll be able to find a log and that the Results tab. 19. In meeting: chat, videochat, notes, reactions: If you need to capture notes, you have a note too. There are two additional default apps, chat and video chat. With the first one, you can chat with the other collaborators. Whereas with the video chat, you can do a live video conference. A share screen function is also available to get more apps button brings us again to the list of all available apps we've already seen earlier the option to hide or show collaborators cursors, and then we have the options to share reactions. These reactions will not be associated to an object that will appear on everybody's board for a couple of seconds. If someone raises their hand than an icon with account will appear close to the participants list. If you click on it, you will see who's raised their hand and it will have the option to lower them all. If you want to follow the activity and the position on the board, a specific collaborator, then you can click on the Participants icon and message will display at the bottom saying that you're following the participant. Now, if I move on the board, on my mobile, the board on the facilitator account will automatically follow the cursor of the mobile participant. The last very useful tool that is available to facilitators is the brain. To me One. You can decide to bring all participants to you or just selected ones. By doing so, the selected participants will be brought to the part of the board that you're focusing on. And if now move around the board as a facilitator, you see that the other participants cursor is automatically moving along. 20. Additional settings: The last tab we're going to quickly explore include some standard settings, but also some interesting options. By clicking a mirror, we go back to all our boards. Here we can edit the board settings. We can start the board. Then we have settings in preferences. We can choose whether we use the mouse or a trackpad, whether we want objects to snap to the grid line, and whether we want to mirror to suggest the object size. The second setting is the background grid. You can select no grid, line grid. That's the one you've been seeing so far. And then adult grade, the next setting is an important one, set start view. With this option, you can set the boards start view for newly invited members. So let's say I'm launching the board and N1, all collaborators to see this part of the board when they join. So it'd be able to have all the collaborators focused on the relevant area of the board. The next setting is follow all threads. Then we have discovered apps and tools that brings us to the list of apps that we've already seen earlier than we have access to Learning Center and finally to account settings. The next icon points to the feed. This shows the feed of information that is shared by mirror. The next important option is export this board. We can export the board in many formats. The next function is search. Here you can search for content on your board, like searching for each other. Points me to the last good to know each other text. The last icon brings us to explore apps and integrations, which again leads us to the same app page, has everything you need for advanced collaboration. Is it the right whiteboard for you? Well, I suggest you register for the free plan and try it.