Why is RealtimeBoard the best way to collaborate creatively?

Collaborative communication

In the CGI business concise communication is vital as our projects progress, both with our clients and internally. Email is a great tool but when we’re going back and forth with new ideas and changes to a project and the thread starts to grow it all becomes a bit unmanageable. We decided we needed a simpler, more organised and collaborative way to share our work and ideas.

Enter RealtimeBoard…

RealtimeBoard (RTB) is a giant online digital whiteboard that can be shared with anyone, no matter where they are and because updates happen in real time you will always be up to date. You do need an account to access any boards shared with you but you can login simply using Google or Facebook so it only takes a minute to get started. Once you’re in you can add new content and leave comments for other members. Below we’ve put together a quick how to guide explaining the main features and tools.

Simple navigation

Once you’re in it’s so easy to get around. The ‘Select’ tool allows you to move across the board by clicking on the background and dragging to different areas whilst holding the left mouse button. Incase you are worried you might disturbing something in the board as you are navigating you can also hold the space bar whilst clicking or hold your mouse’s scroll wheel (or middle mouse button).

Moving objects

With the ‘Select’ tool you can also move and scale objects on the board. For moving you just need click and hold on the item and move it across the board and once an item is selected you can drag the corners to scale it.

Effortless zoom

Zooming is extremely quick and easy, all you need to do use the scroll wheel to move in and out. Alternatively you can you the the last tool, ‘Toggle Minimap’, to zoom and set scale and your view.

Insert media

The blue ‘Insert’ icon at the top of the tool bar allows you to do just that. You can upload files for your computer, such as images, PDFs and word processing document. RealtimeBoard has a number of integrations as well so you can insert items from Google Image Search, Google Drive and Youtube, to name a few.

Download images

You can also download content from a board. To do this you just right click on the item you need and select ‘Download’. With most files an automatic download will start, but with .jpg images the full res image in a new tab, which you can then right click on and select ‘Save image as’.

Comment on that thing

The sixth icon in the tool bar is the ‘Comment’ tool. To use this you need to click on the specific area you want to comment on, really handy as you don’t need to waste time explaining what you’re referring to, and then just type out your message. Once you’ve made a comment a small bubble will appear with a new thread that anyone in the board can reply to. The precise commenting is great as we can create a number of different detailed threads for specific elements on the board. You can also now mention other users in your comments to let them know what you’ve said, to do this all you need to do is type the @ symbol and their user name and they will receive a notification linking them to the board.