Microsoft’s other digital collaboration tool that isn’t OneNote, Whiteboard, is getting improved with improved Bing Image Search later this month.
Perhaps, looking to keep up with Google’s Jamboard and undercut Apple’s nascent FreeForm app, Microsoft’s Whiteboard roadmap has a new Bing Image Search feature added to its release timetable that will include:
The ability to search online images through Bing is coming soon to Whiteboard web, Teams and Windows App. This service can be controlled by optional connected experiences policy, which controls whether users have access to the functionality.
The new image search was added to the free Whiteboard app and its roadmap on May 31, 2022, is currently in development, and is expected to hit the platform with general availability as soon as this month (June 2022).
The addition of Bing Search should help further mainstream the use of Whiteboard as an intuitive brainstorming application.
Whiteboard has a modern and streamlined context menu that does not offer additional search options nor does it have the paired down Create Menu which offers a simple bridge to Images located on the desktop.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft’s other brainstorm-like collaborative tool OneNote implores a similar Bing Image Search feature which is initiated by either a context menu or the Insert tab along the ribbon.
Soon we’ll see if Microsoft offers a similar workflow for inserting images from the web or if they continue to modernize their approach to functionality within the Whiteboard paradigm. Ultimately, we might see a merging of the two platforms if features continue to overlap.
