Whiteboards Overview

What a m18t Whiteboard is, how to create a brand-scoped board, what autosaves, and how live entity nodes differ from a generic, plain sticky-note tool.

What you'll learn

  • What a Whiteboard is in m18t and how it differs from a generic sticky-note tool.
  • How to create a board and what gets saved.
  • Why boards are brand-scoped and where the live entity nodes come from.

What a Whiteboard is

A Whiteboard is a persistent, free-form canvas inside your studio, at /studio/whiteboards. You drop nodes on it, connect them with edges, pan and zoom, and it saves as you go. Switch brands and you get that brand's boards — boards are brand-scoped, like the rest of the workspace.

The difference from a plain whiteboarding tool is that a m18t board can hold live entity nodes — a node that wraps a real m18t record (a PD Solution, Feature, Model, a content piece, an asset, an event, an artifact) and shows its current status, with a click-through to open it. A normal sticky note is just text you typed. An entity node is a window onto something that actually exists in your workspace. That distinction is covered in Entity Nodes vs. Stickies.

So a board can be pure brainstorming, or it can be a map of real structure — or both on the same canvas.

A naming note: the feature is called Whiteboards everywhere you'll see it. (You may spot an internal "jams" reference deep in usage limits; that's plumbing, not the product name. The board surface is Whiteboards.)

How to create a board

  1. Open Whiteboards in the sidebar (/studio/whiteboards).
  2. Click New Board.
  3. Pick the brand the board belongs to. A brand that's reached its board limit is marked Full — pick another brand or review usage to free a slot.
  4. Give the board a title and click Create Board. You'll land on the empty canvas.

From there, add nodes with the toolbar at the bottom of the canvas, and pull in real records from the Studio Entities panel (covered next).

What gets saved

A board stores its nodes, edges, and viewport — so when you reopen it, your layout, connections, and pan/zoom are where you left them. Saving runs automatically as you work; there's also a manual save control in the toolbar if you want to flush changes immediately. The toolbar shows the current save state ("Saved" / "Saving"), and a failed save surfaces as "Retry" so you're not left guessing.

Entity nodes are a partial exception worth knowing: a node points at a live record. If that record is later deleted or renamed, the node shows a "Source deleted" mark and greys out — it becomes the last-known snapshot rather than a live window. That's deliberate, so a board never shows a deleted record as if it were still live.

Variations

  • Brainstorm board — stickies, shapes, text, and rich-text notes only. No links to real data.
  • System map — mostly entity nodes pulled from PD, wired with edges to show relationships.
  • Event storming — PD models plus analytics events dragged on to map a flow. See Event Storming on a Whiteboard.

FAQ

Where are Whiteboards? In the sidebar at /studio/whiteboards. Click New Board to make one.

Is it called a "Jam"? No. The feature is Whiteboards. An old "jams" name lingers only in internal usage-limit plumbing; it isn't the product name.

Are my boards shared across brands? No. Each board belongs to one brand and only shows when that brand is active. See The Brand Switcher.

Do I have to save manually? No — boards autosave as you work. There's a manual sync control in the toolbar if you want to flush immediately, and it shows the save state.

Why is a brand marked "Full" when I try to create a board? That brand has hit its whiteboard limit for your plan. Pick another brand or review your usage to free a slot.

Can I share a board with someone? Not yet — the Share control is present but disabled ("coming soon"). Share links and real-time co-editing are roadmap.

What's next

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