Enabling or disabling persistent collaboration on cloud-saved whiteboards
Users can grant persistent access to whiteboards saved to the cloud, both during and outside of meetings. They can choose to share their whiteboards exclusively with users within their organization or include users from outside their organization. Admins have the ability to enable collaboration on whiteboards with external users. Account owners and administrators can enable or disable these options for specific user groups or the entire account.
Note: Users also have the option to grant temporary access to whiteboards shared in a meeting without requiring persistent cloud access.
Requirements for enabling or disabling persistent collaboration on cloud-saved whiteboards
- Administrator privileges on the Zoom web portal
How to enable or disable persistent collaboration on cloud-saved whiteboards
Account
To enable or disable persistent collaboration on cloud-saved whiteboards for all users in the account:
- Sign in to the Zoom web portal as an admin with the privilege to edit account settings.
- In the navigation menu, click Account Management, then Account Settings.
- Click the Whiteboard tab.
- Under Whiteboard Collaboration, click the Allow persistent collaboration on cloud-saved whiteboards toggle to enable or disable it.
- If a verification dialog appears, click Enable or Disable to verify the change.
- Select who can collaborate on cloud saved whiteboards owned by your account:
- Only users in organization: This option allows only users within the same organization to have access and collaborate on the shared whiteboard.
- Only users in organization and specified domains: This option allows only users within the same organization and specified domains to have access and collaborate on the shared whiteboard.
- Anyone, including those external to your organization: This option allows or restricts users outside your organization to collaborate on whiteboards hosted/owned by your organization.
- Click Save.
- (Optional) To prevent all users in your account from changing these settings, click the lock icon
, and then click Lock to confirm the setting.
Group
To enable or disable persistent collaboration on cloud-saved whiteboards for a group of users:
- Sign in to the Zoom web portal as an admin with the privilege to edit groups.
- In the navigation menu, click User Management then Groups.
- Click the applicable group name from the list.
- Click the Whiteboard tab.
- Under Whiteboard Collaboration, click the Allow persistent collaboration on cloud-saved whiteboards toggle to enable or disable it.
- If a verification dialog appears, click Enable or Disable to verify the change.
- Select who can collaborate on cloud saved whiteboards owned by your account:
- Only users in organization: This option allows only users within the same organization to have access and collaborate on the shared whiteboard.
- Only users in organization and specified domains: This option allows only users within the same organization and specified domains to have access and collaborate on the shared whiteboard.
- Anyone, including those external to your organization: This option allows or restricts users outside your organization to collaborate on whiteboards hosted/owned by your organization.
- Click Save.
- (Optional) To prevent all users in the group from changing these settings, click the lock icon
, and then click Lock to confirm the setting.
Admins also have the ability to control whether users within your organization can collaborate on whiteboards hosted outside of the organization.
- Allow users in your organization to collaborate on boards outside your organization (out-of-meeting): This option allows or restricts collaborating on boards hosted/owned by other organizations outside of meetings.
- For in-meeting restrictions, visit Meeting settings: This will bring you to the Meeting settings where you can disable or enable whiteboard sharing for meeting participants.
What happens if saving whiteboards to the cloud is disabled
Whiteboards with the cloud saving option turned off are temporary in nature and not saved permanently in the Zoom cloud. As long as there is a single active user on the whiteboard, others can join by refreshing an inactive browser tab or opening a previously bookmarked link. If saving whiteboards to the cloud is disabled after whiteboards are created, the whiteboard lifespan is limited to the session of the last user. If there are no active users for the whiteboard, it will no longer be available, even if the collaborators have bookmarked or saved the link to it. This includes the following cases:
- The collaborator closed the browser or loaded a different URL in the same browser tab.
- The collaborator is inactive for a predefined period of time. This is currently defined as 60 minutes. After this period the user is disconnected from the whiteboard.
- If all collaborators are offline because of any of the above reasons, the whiteboard will no longer be reopened.