How to Use Collab Boards (Whiteboards in Kendis)

Collaboration Boards are an infinite, real-time whiteboard built directly into Kendis. They're made for the working sessions Agile teams run all the time , retrospectives, PI-planning preparation, brainstorming, journey and story mapping, dependency walls, risk workshops , any exercise where a group needs to think together on a shared surface of sticky notes.

What makes them different from a general-purpose whiteboard is where they live. A Collaboration Board sits inside Kendis, right next to the PI boards, ARTs and risks the conversation is about. It uses your Kendis login, obeys your Kendis permissions, and records to your Kendis audit trail. The outcome of the session doesn't have to be copied from one tool into another , it's already home.

Everything on a board is live. Every sticky note, every drag, every vote appears for all participants the instant it happens, and the board saves itself continuously. You can bring in people who don't have a Kendis account by sharing a link , they join, pick a display name, and collaborate in real time. And Charlie AI is built in throughout: it can construct a board from a one-line description, summarize a full board into decisions and open questions, and rewrite the text on any note.

This guide walks through every part of the product in depth. If you're brand new, read sections 1–3 to get productive; the rest is there when you need it.

There are two places a board can begin:

When you create a new board you have three ways to fill it:

Spend a moment learning where things live , it makes everything else faster.

The toolbar is modal: click a tool to arm it, then click (or drag) on the canvas to create. After you place an element the board usually returns to the Select pointer so you can immediately move or edit what you just made. The Select tool is the default , it's what you use to pick things up, resize them, and open their edit bar. Pan (hand) lets you drag the canvas around without selecting anything.

An infinite canvas is only useful if you can move around it confidently.

Sticky notes are the atoms of a board , the thing most sessions are made of.

Pick the Sticky note tool, choose a colour from the palette that appears, and click anywhere on the canvas to drop one. It's immediately ready for text , just start typing. The text auto-sizes: short notes show large, friendly type; as you write more, the font shrinks to keep everything readable inside the note. You never have to manage font size to make a note fit.

To edit an existing note's text, double-click it.

Select a note (single click with the Select tool) and a floating edit bar appears above it. From here you can:

Drag any corner handle to resize a note freely on the open canvas; the text re-flows to the new shape. Drag the body of the note to move it. (Inside a column, resizing behaves differently , the column governs card width; see Columns.)

Columns are the workhorse of structured sessions , retrospectives, triage boards, ranked shortlists, anything where notes belong in named lists. A column is a self-organising vertical stack of sticky notes with a coloured header.

Reach for a column when items belong to categories and you want a tidy, ordered, rankable list. Reach for free sticky notes on the open canvas when position itself carries meaning , clustering, timelines, two-by-two matrices, story maps. A frame is the third option: it groups mixed content loosely without stacking it. You can freely mix all three on one board.

This is the part worth understanding, because columns keep their cards tidy by owning card width:

The two directions are designed to be coherent rather than fight each other: resize the column and the cards conform to it; resize a card and the column conforms to the card, then the siblings conform to the column. At rest, the invariant is always the same , every card is flush at the column's inner width.

Each column header carries:

The Shapes & pen tool opens a picker with seven shapes , Rounded rectangle, Rectangle, Ellipse, Circle, Diamond, Triangle, Parallelogram , plus a freehand Pen and an Eraser.

The Text tool places free-standing text anywhere , section titles, headings, annotations that aren't notes. Adjust the size (anywhere from 6 to 200) and colour from its edit bar. Use it to label areas of the board ("↑ Sprint 1", "Parking lot →").

A frame is an open container region. Anything you place inside a frame moves with it, so a frame is the way to group mixed content , notes, shapes, an image , that should travel together as a unit. Fit to Content (on the frame's edit bar) shrinks the frame neatly around whatever it currently holds. Unlike a column, a frame doesn't stack or re-size its contents , it just contains them.

The Image tool uploads a picture onto the board (you'll see "Uploading image…" while it processes). Use it for screenshots, reference diagrams, photos of a physical wall, or a logo. Images resize with a locked aspect ratio so they never distort.

Connectors show relationships , dependencies, cause and effect, flow , by drawing a line between any two items.

Select a connector for its edit bar:

Connectors stay attached as you move their endpoints , drag either item and the line follows and re-routes. If you delete an item, its connectors go with it.

Selecting several elements gives you a shared edit bar so you can recolour or restyle them together.

Duplicate copies the current selection (offset slightly so you can see the copy); standard copy / paste keyboard shortcuts also work, including pasting a copied selection into a new position.

Delete (or ⌫, or the trash in the edit bar) removes the selection. Deleting several elements at once asks for a confirmation first , because it's easy to do by accident after a marquee, and it removes those elements and their comments and connectors for everyone on the board. Deleting a zone also asks first, and takes the zone's contents with it (see Zones).

When elements overlap, control which sits on top from the right-click menu or More options: Bring to Front, Bring Forward, Send Backward, Send to Back.

Undo and Redo live at the top-right, and respond to the usual ⌘/Ctrl + Z and ⌘/Ctrl + Shift + Z. Undo covers content changes , creating, editing, moving, deleting , so a mistaken delete (even of a zone and its contents) is one keystroke away from coming back.

Two lightweight ways to respond to content without changing it.

From a note's edit bar, add an emoji reaction. Reactions are quick, informal signals , a thumbs-up, a spark of agreement , perfect for a fast pulse read that doesn't warrant a full voting round. They sit on the note and everyone sees them live.

Select any element and choose Comment to pin a threaded discussion to it. A comment pin attaches to the element showing the author's initial and the number of messages. Teammates reply in the thread; you can edit or delete individual comments and replies. When a discussion is settled, Resolve the thread to close it out. Comments from guests show their chosen display name with a "guest" badge, so it's always clear who said what.

Comments are the right tool when the response needs a conversation or a decision recorded against a specific item , as opposed to reactions, which are just a signal.

Zones are named, colour-tinted regions that organise a large board , think of them as labelled areas of a physical wall. On a small board you may never need one; on a hundred-note workshop with three exercises, zones are what keep everyone oriented.

Shortcut: if you search the Zones panel for a name that doesn't exist yet, you're offered Create "your text" right there.

Membership is automatic and visual: drag any element inside a zone's boundary and it joins; the tab count updates. Drag it out and it leaves. Columns and frames count as members too , the panel shows a breakdown like "2 frames · 14 items". Resizing a zone re-evaluates what's inside, so you can grow a zone to adopt nearby content. There's nothing to configure , the zone simply tracks whatever sits within it.

From the zone's ⋯ menu: Rename, Colour, Name size (so section headers read well at any zoom), Duplicate (copies the zone and everything inside it, offset alongside), and Delete zone.

Deleting a zone deletes its contents. The zone and everything inside it are removed together, after a confirmation dialog. If you want to keep something, drag it out of the zone first , or press Undo right after, which restores the zone and its contents together.

Voting turns a wall of stickies into a decision. Instead of the loudest voice winning, everyone on the board , including guests on an edit link , gets the same controls, and the result is tallied, ranked and summarised for you.

Click Start voting in the top bar. If the board already has finished rounds, you'll first be asked whether to keep previous rounds browsable or discard them before starting fresh.

The third option in Reactions , Discuss , matters: it lets people flag a note for conversation without having to be for or against it.

Vote controls appear under every note for everyone on the board. The voting bar keeps the facilitator oriented: each person sees their own remaining budget ("3 of 5 votes left"), and the bar shows votes cast, notes engaged, who's done vs still voting, and the timer. You can Pause, Resume, add time, hide the bar, or End round at any point.

When the round closes, the Voting results summary opens (and can be reopened any time):

Two Charlie helpers live in the results:

Every finished round is kept in history; before the next round you choose to keep or discard it.

Charlie, the Kendis AI assistant, is built into every board via Build with Charlie. It helps in three distinct places, and it never changes your board without you seeing it first.

Choose Build with Charlie → Generate Template. Describe what you want in the brief , mention the columns, categories, or sample content , for example: "Sprint retrospective with 4 columns , What Went Well, What Didn't, Action Items, Kudos. Add 3 sample notes per column." The more structure you name, the closer the first draft lands. Or start from a ready-made play (Sprint Retrospective, Checkout Journey Map, SWOT Analysis, Team Brainstorm, Quarterly Roadmap), which pre-fills a brief you can edit.

Charlie drafts a preview first , your board stays untouched until you apply it. You'll see it work through its stages (reading the brief, choosing a structure, drafting notes, laying out frames). Then you refine:

When it's right, Apply to board drops the structure onto the canvas, ready for the real session.

Choose Summarize Board. Charlie reads everything , notes, columns, frames, and the discussion in comment threads , and produces a structured summary of themes, decisions, action items and open questions. Add an optional focus ("risks and blockers") to steer it, regenerate any time, and Add summary to the canvas to keep it on the board. This is the fastest way to close a session: run the summary, add it, share the board link.

Select any element with text and open Charlie from its edit bar:

Charlie's edits go through the normal edit pipeline, so Undo reverts them like any other change, and everyone on the board sees the update live.

Templates let you start from a proven structure instead of a blank canvas , and turn your own best boards into reusable starting points.

Open Use a Template. The picker has two collections: Kendis templates (ready-made structures for common exercises) and Your templates (boards you or your teammates saved). Search, click a template to preview it, and apply it. Templates add their structure to the current board rather than replacing it , so you can apply one to an empty board to start fresh, or add an exercise structure alongside existing content (it arrives clear of your existing work).

Ran a great session? Keep the structure. Choose Save as Template, give it a name, and optionally pick the board type it should create. A copy of the board is saved , without comments and images (templates capture reusable structure, not session-specific content). It then appears in your boards list and in the Your templates tab for everyone who creates boards in your workspace.

When no existing template fits, describe what you need and let Charlie design it (see Charlie AI). A nice loop: apply a Charlie-generated structure, tweak it to taste, then Save as Template , now the whole team can reuse it.

Click Share in the top bar to open the board to people beyond your Kendis instance.

Only board owners/admins can change sharing , the toggles are disabled for others, so a guest can't reshare your board.

Open History from the board menu to see who changed what. The log records elements added, edited, moved or deleted, comments and resolutions, and sharing and settings changes. Guests appear with their display name and a guest badge. (Simple drags and resizes aren't logged , only real content edits , so the history stays signal, not noise.) Because the board lives in Kendis, this trail is part of your Kendis record, not a separate export.

Collaboration Boards inherit your Kendis permission model, and the important principle is that rights are scoped to the collection a board belongs to.

If you can see a board but can't edit it, or a button is missing, it's because your role in that board's collection doesn't include the permission , ask a collection admin to adjust it.

Open the settings gear (or Edit Board Settings) for:

Autosave runs constantly , the top bar shows Saved / Saving…, and if the connection drops you'll see "Not saved , retrying" until it reconnects. You never lose work to a forgotten save.