In a session
Pick up the pen
There is nothing to set up. A new board opens on the Pen, and a stroke lands wherever you put it: on the canvas, or over a chart, a screenshot, or a block of code already sitting there. The stroke records pressure, so it keeps the weight you gave it.
The Highlighter is translucent. It marks the one line you are about to talk about without covering it, which a solid stroke cannot do. Each tool remembers its own color and thickness, so moving between them never costs you a setting. While the pen is down, touch is suspended, and a hand resting on the glass does not pan the board.
Ink and tools has the rest of the palette.
The pen loop is an ordinary stroke on the board, drawn straight over the code.
The highlighter band is translucent, so the line it marks is still the line everyone reads.
Pin a live demo without leaving the board
Add a LiveView of DAX Studio, SSMS, or a browser. When the query result is the thing you want to keep talking about, copy the LiveView and paste. The paste is a still bitmap of the last frame, a screenshot that stays on the board while you keep drawing.
Freeze the original LiveView if you want that same container to stay put and resume later. Disconnect if you want the last frame with no live controls; only Reconnect brings a feed back. Reconnect after you reload a board: Windows cannot save the capture permission, so the saved frame appears immediately and Reconnect restores the live feed. The states are drawn below.
The LiveView keeps following its window, so its numbers move on without you.
The paste is a bitmap of the frame you copied. It holds that result still, and takes ink like any other picture.
Keep ink on the slide you are discussing
A finished stroke that touches only one container (an image, a text block, or a LiveView) travels with that container when you move or resize it. A stroke that crosses two containers stays on the canvas. Delete the container and its linked ink goes with it. Undo treats the whole operation as one step.
1 sits wholly inside the chart container, so it travels with it. The dashed outline is where the container was.
2 crosses into the notes container, so it stays on the canvas.
Explain code
Paste SQL or DAX, or drop a .sql or .dax file. Use the title-bar chip to set the language, press F6 to format it locally, then draw on the container. Formatting no longer needs edit mode: F6 works on the container as soon as it is selected.
F2 moves the container into edit mode. Ctrl+Enter goes back to display mode and keeps the changes. Escape also goes back to display mode, but cancels the changes and restores the text, language, and size the container had before.
The two modes resize differently. In edit mode the text reflows as you change the width, so a long line wraps onto more lines at the same size. In display mode a resize scales the whole visual, like a picture of the code, so the room still sees the layout you just formatted.
In edit mode the width decides where the lines break, and the code stays at reading size.
In display mode the same block is scaled as one picture, so the formatting you just applied survives the resize.
Talk to the room
The laser pointer is for the projector, not for the file. Preferences control how long the trail stays fully visible after you lift, how long it then takes to fade away, and how much a light touch is thinned out — a pen reports very little pressure on a quick tap, and the heavier trail weights keep that tap as readable as a firm stroke. A pen in the air shows a small high-contrast hover dot; the dot disappears on contact so it never sits under the nib. With the laser selected that hover dot is the laser itself, halo and all, and it draws a short comet as you move: the faster you sweep, the longer the comet, so the room can follow the pointer before you have touched anything. A physical mouse keeps a normal arrow.
The laser fades behind the pointer and never touches the file.
The pen carries a hover dot only while it is off the glass, so the marker never sits under the nib.
Fit what you are talking about
Double-click a container to center it and fill the view. Double-click empty canvas to frame everything on the board, or to reset an empty board. The canvas is unbounded: one finger pans, two fingers pinch-zoom, the mouse wheel zooms at the pointer. Finger drawing, when turned on in Preferences, makes one finger use the current tool instead; two fingers still navigate.
Double-click a container and it centers and scales until it fills the view.
Double-click empty canvas instead and the frame widens until the whole board fits.
Bring a workshop in
A .wimport file is Markdown that builds image and text containers. Drop it on an open board to add them under the pointer. File → Open, or a double-click in the released install, starts a new untitled board from the recipe. Save always writes a .wboard.
Missing pictures or scripts are skipped and listed in a dialog you can copy.
The import format is the contract for that file.
Each heading, picture, and paragraph in the recipe becomes a container.
Drop the file on an open board and they arrive under the pointer.
Keep boards next to the material they document
A saved board carries a picture of itself, so you can tell one board from another without opening any of them. Windows Explorer shows that picture as the thumbnail.
VS Code shows it too, once SQLBI Whiteboard for VS Code is installed. VS Code offers that extension on its own the first time you open a folder holding a .wboard file, so a board checked in beside the material it explains stays readable in the editor.
The board
Ink and tools
The session starts on the Pen. Each tool keeps its own color and thickness, so switching back returns you to the stroke you were using.
Palm rejection suspends touch while the pen is down, so a resting hand does not pan the board. Without a pen, turn on Finger drawing to reach Eraser and Pan on the palette. The toolbar stays small on purpose; Preferences control whether it sits in a corner or follows a layout you prefer, and right-clicking it hides it altogether.
Navigation
The canvas is unbounded. Finger drawing changes what a single finger does and nothing else.
| Input | Does | With Finger drawing on |
|---|---|---|
| One finger | Pans the board | Uses the current tool |
| Two fingers | Pinch-zooms | Unchanged |
| Mouse wheel | Zooms at the pointer | Unchanged |
| Middle mouse, right mouse held, or Space | Pans while held | Unchanged |
| Double-click a container | Centers it and fills the view | Unchanged |
| Double-click empty canvas | Frames the whole board, or resets an empty one | Unchanged |
The window can sit in a narrow strip beside another app. F11 fills the monitor and hides the title and tabs. Ctrl+F11 hides the same chrome and keeps the window where it is. Escape leaves either unless a text container is being edited.
Containers
Images, LiveViews, and text blocks are containers. With a mouse, click to move, drag the circular handle to resize while keeping aspect ratio. Releasing the mouse returns to the drawing tool you had. Imported images accept PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, and SVG, including clipboard paste and Explorer drag-and-drop. An SVG is kept as its markup and redrawn at every size, so enlarging one costs it nothing.
View → Bring to front and View → Send to back reorder the selected container and its linked strokes. Strokes cannot be reordered on their own.
Text, SQL, and DAX
Paste prefers an image when the clipboard has one, including a file SnagIt or another capture tool left on the clipboard. Paste plain text to create a selected text container.
SVG counts as an image, whether the source application published it as SVG or the markup was simply copied as text — the output of a DAX SVG measure pastes as a picture, not as a snippet. Copying an SVG container puts the markup and a bitmap on the clipboard together, so an editor receives the source and a slide receives the picture.
Help → Preferences sets Snippet format order: paste tries those languages from top to bottom. Plain text always matches, so putting it first keeps paste as plain text. Use the title-bar chip to choose Plain text, SQL Server, or DAX afterward.
F6 formats SQL or DAX on the selected container, without entering edit mode. F2 edits the container, and double-click still centers it and fits it to the canvas; inside an edit F6 formats in place and Ctrl+Enter commits that format with the rest of the edit. SQL Server mode targets SQL Server 2025 T-SQL, keeps GO batch separators, and leaves an invalid script unchanged. Escape restores the previous text, language, and size.
LiveView
View → LiveView captures a window or a display. The container behaves like an image: move, resize, frame, delete, undo.
Files
The File row holds four commands: New, Open, Save, and Save As. Ctrl+S and Ctrl+O save and open a .wboard without opening the row at all.
The released installer registers that type and .wimport. The pre-release (Dev) channel does not, so it can sit beside a released copy without stealing the file association.
The command strip
File, Edit, View, and Help sit on a thin tab strip. Click a tab for a one-row command strip over the canvas; click the canvas to hide it. Edit and Help stay open after a command so you can run several; File and View close. Drawing tools stay on the floating palette, which never moves out from under your hand.
Preferences
Help → Preferences is a searchable list: which monitor to open on, start full screen, whether to warn when there is nothing to draw with, finger drawing, what the pen's barrel button does, snippet format order, laser trail timing and weight, toolbar placement and layout, and the daily new-version check. Settings about how something looks — the trail weight, the barrel button, where the toolbar sits and how it is laid out — draw their options rather than naming them, so the choice is made by looking. Help → About shows the version. New settings are more rows in Preferences, not a new dialog.