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.

This article covers:

• How to enable or disable persistent collaboration on cloud-saved whiteboards
  • Account
  • Group
• What happens if saving whiteboards to the cloud is disabled

Prerequisites 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

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. Click Account Management, then Account Settings.
3. Click the Whiteboard tab.
4. Under the Whiteboard Collaboration section, click the Allow persistent collaboration on cloud-saved whiteboards toggle to enable or disable the option.
5. If a verification dialog appears, click Enable or Disable to verify the change.
6. Select who can collaborate on cloud saved whiteboards owned by your account:
   • Only users in the same organization: This option is selected by default. Only users within the same organization can access and collaborate on the shared whiteboard.
   • Users in the same organization and outside your organization: This option allows users outside your organization to collaborate on whiteboards hosted by your organization.
7. (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

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. In the navigation menu, click User Management then Groups.
3. Click the applicable group name from the list.
4. Click the Whiteboard tab.
5. Under the Whiteboard Collaboration section, click the Allow persistent collaboration on cloud-saved whiteboards toggle to enable or disable the option.
6. If a verification dialog appears, click Enable or Disable to verify the change.
7. Select who can collaborate on cloud saved whiteboards owned by your account:
   • Only users in the same organization: This option is selected by default. Only users within the same organization can access and collaborate on the shared whiteboard.
   • Users in the same organization and outside your organization: This option allows users outside your organization to collaborate on whiteboards hosted by your organization.
8. (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.