Product updates

IdeaBoard now introduces interactive navigation between components, letting you craft dynamic, non-linear presentations with smooth zoom and scroll transitions. Engage your audience or team by turning any whiteboard into a clickable, guided experience perfect for storytelling, brainstorming walkthroughs, or product demos.

How to Add Interactions

To get started, right-click on any supported component such as a button, sticky note, section, text box, or frame. You’ll see two new options in the context menu:

1. Add Web Link: Create a hyperlink from your component to any external webpage or online resource.
2. Add Internal Link: Connect one component to another within your whiteboard. You can link to large components like sections, mind maps, frames, or documents for presentation-style navigation.

By combining multiple internal links, you can establish a non-linear navigation path across different parts of your whiteboard, helping viewers explore ideas fluidly rather than following a rigid slide sequence.

How to Navigate Between Components

Once interactions are set up, click on any interactive component or use the right-arrow shortcut key to follow its link. IdeaBoard will automatically zoom and scroll to the target area, fitting it perfectly to your screen.

To return, press the left-arrow key—IdeaBoard remembers your navigation history, allowing seamless back-and-forth movement between connected components. This makes exploring complex boards effortless and immersive.

Use Cases for Interactive Whiteboards

Non-Linear Presentations:

Present ideas dynamically by jumping between sections based on audience input instead of following a fixed slide order. Perfect for brainstorming sessions, workshops, and agile reviews.

Interactive Storytelling and Product Demos:

Create narrative-style walkthroughs of user journeys or design concepts. Link wireframes, mockups, or idea clusters to demonstrate flow and context.

Flowcharts and Architecture Diagrams:

Showcase complex systems or workflows with interactive navigation. Link nodes, subsystems, or related diagrams to zoom into deeper layers of your architecture or process visualization.

Interactive Knowledge Maps and Documentation:

Build connected knowledge bases or process documents where each note or component links to supporting visuals or references, helping teams explore topics intuitively.

Training and Educational Boards:

Teachers and trainers can design guided learning paths—linking lessons, exercises, and examples into a structured yet explorative format that keeps learners engaged.

Sample demo: https://app.mockflow.com/iview/crmpresent#/mode/view

Final Note

With Interactions, IdeaBoard evolves from a whiteboard into an interactive presentation and storytelling platform. Whether you’re explaining workflows, teaching concepts, or mapping ideas, you can now guide your audience through your whiteboard with clarity, motion, and intent.

Now brainstorm with locations using the new maps component in IdeaBoard. Add location markers to ideate on geo based visualization. Available in flat or as 3D globe along with AI generation of markers.

Brainstorm with Maps

Maps play a vital role in brainstorming when your ideas or strategies are tied to geography. The new Maps component in IdeaBoard makes visualizing spatial ideas easy, accurate, and fully integrated into your whiteboard workflow. Unlike traditional mapping tools, this component is built specifically for whiteboarding allowing you to drag and drop multiple maps, resize, reposition, and customize them effortlessly. Explore different perspectives, themes, and locations to bring clarity and context to your geographic brainstorming sessions.

AI+Maps = geosome

Just like other smart components in IdeaBoard, the Maps component comes with built-in AI assistance to make map creation faster and smarter. Simply click the AI button in the settings and enter a prompt to generate a map for anything from F1 race circuits to top hospitals in Spain. The AI doesn’t just place locations it also adds contextual marker icons that visually represent your topic, such as race cars or hospital symbols. You can even generate complete map components using Mida, the MockFlow Intelligent Design Assistant, for instant, AI-powered geo visualization that fits perfectly into your whiteboard brainstorming.

Perspectives and Themes

Experience maps the way you prefer either as a flat 2D view (Mercator projection) or a fully interactive 3D globe visualization. You can zoom, pan, rotate, and spin the globe effortlessly for dynamic exploration. Each perspective supports multiple visual themes currently including normal, dark, white, and gray allowing you to match your map’s appearance with your whiteboard’s overall design

Unlimited and free usage of maps component

The Maps component in IdeaBoard is available with unlimited and free access for all users, including those on the Free Basic plan. Since MockFlow hosts its own dedicated maps server, you can explore, create, and collaborate without any usage limits or third-party restrictions. While AI-powered map generation depends on your available AI credits, the Maps component itself remains fully functional without AI, ensuring everyone can brainstorm visually with no barriers.

Use cases

1. Market Planning: Visualize expansion opportunities, target cities, and regional strategies.
2. Education & Research: Create interactive geography or data maps for learning and presentations.
3. Event Mapping: Plan global events, tours, or campaigns with clear location markers.
4. Team Collaboration: Coordinate remote teams and regional activities on a shared map.
5. Travel & Exploration: Design travel itineraries or visualize destinations with 3D globe views.

Comments in MockFlow IdeaBoard just got a major upgrade. With the new Comments 2.0, board members can now share feedback and ideas more naturally through video or voice comments. Whether it’s explaining a concept visually or adding quick audio feedback, discussions on your boards are now more contextual, expressive, and human than ever before.

Express naturally

In IdeaBoard, comments are now treated as core components rather than simple add-ons. You can drag, position, or even attach them to specific sections just like any other element on your board. This makes feedback more collaborative, organized, and easy to follow within defined discussion threads.

While text comments work well for quick notes, they often fall short when it comes to expressing tone, emotion, or detailed thoughts. The latest update changes that board members can now record short video messages using their camera or share voice notes as audio comments, making communication more natural, personal, and expressive than ever before.

Press to Capture

Adding a video or voice comment in IdeaBoard is as simple as adding a text comment. Just drag and drop a video or audio comment component onto your board. If camera or microphone access isn’t already granted, you’ll be prompted to enable it. Then, hit the Record button to capture your comment whether it’s a quick video message or a voice note.

Once the recording is done, you can preview your capture before uploading. If you’re not satisfied, simply re-record, it’s that easy. The entire process works seamlessly within your browser, with no need for plugins or extensions. Designed with a minimal and intuitive interface, it requires zero learning curve.

To keep things focused, audio and video comments are limited to 2 minutes, which helps maintain viewer attention and ensures faster playback while still giving you enough time to convey your ideas clearly.

Play Seamlessly

Playing back comments is effortless. Simply click on a video or audio comment to start playback instantly and click anywhere outside to stop. There are no unnecessary controls or clutter, just a smooth and natural experience that keeps the focus on the conversation. This intuitive interaction not only feels fluid but also adds a delightful, human touch that makes feedback far more engaging than plain text comments.

Stored Secure and Private

At MockFlow, privacy comes first that also includes your voice or video. All audio and video comments are securely stored using private URLs, ensuring they are never publicly accessible. Only the board members you’ve shared the project with have permission to view or play these recordings.

To further protect your privacy, audio and video comments remain hidden in public links or shared previews of the board. This way, your conversations stay confidential, secure, and accessible only to your team.

Use Cases

Audio and video comments open up a range of new possibilities inside IdeaBoard. Beyond making annotated comments on specific elements, they can be used for board announcements, video walkthroughs, async team updates, and more. When combined with other IdeaBoard components, these rich, multimedia comments unlock creative new ways to collaborate, communicate, and share context visually.

Important: Audio and Video comments are not available in basic plan. It requires IdeaBoard or Bundle plan. However basic users can get a glimpse on how it works in their account.

MockFlow IdeaBoard is now available on the Mac App Store as a secure, file-based offline whiteboard application. Designed for privacy, it requires no internet or servers to run. With a simple one-time purchase, you get unlimited brainstorming.

Whiteboard application that runs without servers

While IdeaBoard is best known as a collaborative online platform for real-time brainstorming, we've also built an offline edition that runs locally on your Mac. This file-based version was designed with two key goals in mind:

One-time purchase

Not every user needs a team-based, subscription whiteboard. Solopreneurs, freelancers, and individuals working in non-team environments may find paying for online collaboration features unnecessary, especially if their use case is simple or doesn't require AI. For them, the offline edition of IdeaBoard offers an affordable alternative. Available on the Mac App Store at a one-time launch price of $39.90, it provides most brainstorming features without recurring fees.

Full data ownership for enterprises

Brainstorming often captures the foundation of a company's next product, process, or breakthrough idea. For many enterprises, where data privacy and compliance are critical, storing this sensitive information on third-party servers may not be acceptable. With IdeaBoard for Mac, all whiteboarding data is saved locally as files, giving organizations complete ownership and control. These files can be seamlessly integrated into existing backup routines and security policies. For team collaboration, companies can securely share .board files using network storage or enterprise-ready file-sharing services like Dropbox or Box—just as they would with other important business documents.

⚠️ Important: Feature limitations

The IdeaBoard app on the Mac App Store offers a simplified, offline-first experience compared to the full online version. While it is actively maintained and updated, certain features are currently not available in this edition:

1. Windows support – available only for Mac (Windows version coming soon)
2. AI features and Mida bot – not included in the offline version
3. Collaboration tools – no audio/video meetings, real-time team chat, or online co-editing
4. Business integrations – no direct connections with apps like Microsoft Teams, Slack, or Office
5. Component library limits – fewer shapes, icons, and advanced design components

With the advantages and limitations of the Mac App Store edition clearly outlined, you can choose the version of IdeaBoard that best fits your workflow whether you prefer the privacy and simplicity of a file-based offline app, or the full power of real-time collaboration in the online version.

Open in Mac AppStore

In IdeaBoard, your whiteboard need not be just white anymore, set vibrant wallpapers or background colors to the set tone, brand of your project whether you are designing a mindmap or in a brainstorming session, creating a diagram, IdeaBoard will now feel like your shared collaborative desktop between your team members that can be accessed anywhere.

MockFlow IdeaBoard is designed with a clean, distraction-free interface that features only a simple top bar. This minimal layout makes it the perfect canvas for wallpapers, as the unobtrusive content area allows your chosen background to shine through. By adding a wallpaper or background color to your whiteboard, you not only give it a desktop-like vibe but also create an immersive atmosphere tailored to your project’s purpose

This feature is especially useful across a wide range of use cases. Set a professional background for mind maps and strategy diagrams to keep the team focused, choose creative wallpapers for brainstorming sessions and mood boards to spark fresh ideas, or apply branded colors when designing flowcharts and project plans to maintain consistency. No matter the format, IdeaBoard backgrounds help you build an engaging, collaborative environment where ideas can grow.

Here are some use cases of using backgrounds in Ideaboard

AWS chart on top of a server rack wallpaper

Brainstorming session with a Mandala chart with background of a meeting room

How to change background ?

To change background of your IdeaBoard project, either right click on the canvas or click the project title in the top toolbar to popup the project options modal. From here you can choose between plain colors, preset wallpapers or even upload or generate your own background wallpaper.

This feature is available in all plans including free basic, so try to convert your 'Whiteboard' into your own branded or contextual board.

With the new IdeaBoard Power-Up for Trello, your team can now collaborate, brainstorm, create diagrams, and visualize ideas, without ever leaving your Trello board.

IdeaBoard is your visual canvas for seamless ideation. When brainstorming happens alongside task management, creativity flows effortlessly. With the new IdeaBoard Power-Up, Atlassian Trello users can easily sketch ideas, attach visual boards, and collaborate in real time all within Trello.

Whiteboard + Productivity = Success

Trello is a powerful productivity tool - fast, agile, and simple enough for teams of all kinds. But Trello tasks often remain text-heavy. While you can attach images to add context, it can be time-consuming, distracting, and limited in flexibility.

That changes now.

With the IdeaBoard Power-Up, you get a full-featured whiteboard experience right inside Trello. Make your tasks visual, easy to understand, and impossible to overlook.

Real Use Cases of the IdeaBoard Power-Up in Trello

“Set up AWS SES for our email architecture”

→ Draw and attach a detailed AWS cloud diagram that clearly illustrates the workflow.

“Social media marketing strategy for product launch”

→ Create (or generate with AI) a visual mind map and connect your ideas in a structured way.

“Blog article for our new feature”

→ Collaborate on multiple documents in a single IdeaBoard—draft, review, and finalize content side by side in real time.

“Status board for the all-hands meeting”

→ Build a sticky note board that feels just like your physical whiteboard, but better—organized, collaborative, and always accessible.

Whatever you want to visualize or brainstorm, the IdeaBoard Power-Up brings it to life—right inside Trello.

MockFlow IdeaBoard is completely free and included in all MockFlow plans. Add the Power-Up to Trello and start visualizing your tasks today. Install now.

Create multiple docs side-by-side, connect docs with flows, combine docs with stickies, images, todos. Move away from the traditional method of writing documents and start creating them visually with IdeaBoard.

We are excited to introduce a new document component with advanced editing features inside IdeaBoard. By combining an infinite canvas with a familiar document editor, you get a fresh approach to writing and organizing content.

Traditional document tools like Google Docs were designed with printing in mind. While they are great for that purpose, they often fall short when used for web-based writing due to their limitations.

With the new document component in IdeaBoard, you can write, arrange, and visualize your content however you like. Your mind processes information more efficiently when everything is visible on one screen, reducing mental strain and helping you think more clearly.

Doc features

Style it the way you want

Real-time editing

AI features:

Focus mode:

The document component supports IdeaBoard’s focus mode, designed to eliminate distractions while editing or reviewing. When enabled, only the document stays visible in the viewport, while all other elements are hidden. This provides a clean, isolated space for focused writing especially helpful when the canvas becomes cluttered or when zooming and panning interrupt the flow. You can also share just the document on its own using focus mode.

Example: https://app.mockflow.com/iview/MI0MLCFBssb#/mode/view/focus/D8be813c57937a67fcdee822eeba21d66

The Docs component in IdeaBoard offers a fresh, visual approach to creating and collaborating on documents. With powerful editing tools, seamless real-time collaboration, and AI-assisted writing, it redefines how documents are written and shared. Best of all, it's available for free across all MockFlow plans.

IdeaBoard: Generate custom whiteboard templates, flowcharts, cloud architecture diagrams with the new AI toolbox inside IdeaBoard editor. It also includes editable prompt library for ideas.

When we first launched IdeaBoard, our goal was to reimagine what online whiteboarding could be. Designed for the AI era, IdeaBoard combines a lightweight interface with powerful components, now enhanced by the new AI Toolbox. Together, they deliver a smarter, faster, and more intuitive whiteboarding experience for modern teams.

What is the AI Toolbox?

IdeaBoard is a whiteboard tool built to turn imagination into action. With its infinite canvas and ever-expanding library of components, it empowers you to think visually and collaboratively. Now, with the addition of the AI Toolbox, transforming your ideas into structured whiteboard layouts is easier than ever. Simply enter a prompt, and the AI will generate ready-to-use templates for brainstorming, strategy sessions, planning, diagrams, flowcharts, meetings, and more instantly.

Why Use AI When Templates Already Exist?

While our template store offers a wide range of pre-made options, the AI Toolbox goes a step further, it creates templates that don’t yet exist. Whether you need something highly specific to your business, project, or workflow, AI makes it easy. Just describe what you need, and it builds a tailored template in seconds.

Need a cloud architecture diagram for your upcoming SaaS app using AWS infrastructure? A custom Agile workflow for your product team? A MoodBoard for your new design system? A Kanban board for managing design approvals? The AI Toolbox can generate all of these and more without starting from scratch.

Prompt Library: Ready-to-Use, Fully Editable

The AI Toolbox includes a built-in Prompt Library filled with pre-written, editable prompts tailored for different use cases. Whether you're creating a brainstorming layout, a workflow diagram, or a strategic planning board, you can simply click to import a relevant prompt, customize it to your needs, and generate your whiteboard template instantly. It’s a fast, flexible way to kickstart your visual thinking without starting from a blank canvas.

Running Out of AI Credits? No Problem.

Every paid MockFlow plan includes monthly AI credits that automatically refresh. But if you need more, the AI Toolbox lets you purchase additional credits anytime. These extra credits never expire as long as your base subscription remains active, so you can use them whenever inspiration strikes, without worrying about time limits.

The Future of the AI Toolbox

This is just the beginning for both IdeaBoard and its AI Toolbox. As IdeaBoard continues to grow with new components and smarter tools, the AI capabilities will evolve too. Expect even more intelligent features, deeper customization options, and advanced templates that adapt to your unique workflows, all powered by the expanding AI Toolbox.

The MockFlow Desktop app for Mac (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Windows (x64) offers several advantages, including native OS integration, a distraction-free experience, faster loading times, and now, file mode. We’re excited to introduce file mode for IdeaBoard, expanding beyond our existing wireframe app.

What is file mode?

Similar to Microsoft Office files like .ppt or .doc, you can now save and open IdeaBoard projects as files with the .board extension. All your whiteboard data—including drawings, images, and assets—is packaged into a single file. This offers several benefits: you don’t need the cloud or a server to open or edit your project, and sharing is as simple as sending any other file. You can easily use your preferred file sharing or storage service, such as Dropbox or Google Drive. Businesses can also keep their own copies for backup and compliance, without relying on MockFlow to store their data.

Encrypted whiteboard files

File mode is designed especially for businesses, allowing you to use IdeaBoard without concerns about servers, backups, uptime, or hosting. However, since these projects are saved as files, they can be easily shared and might unintentionally fall into the wrong hands. To address this, file mode offers optional encryption for IdeaBoard files. You can secure your whiteboard files with a passkey of your choice, and MockFlow protects your .board files using industry-standard 256-bit encryption. The encryption key is stored within the file itself, so your project cannot be opened, viewed, or edited without the correct passkey. You can change the key as often as needed, and no cloud support is required for encryption or decryption..

Git-based collaboration

Git is a distributed version control system known for managing code and files in collaborative workflows. With IdeaBoard’s file mode, you can include whiteboard files directly within your existing git projects. This means architecture diagrams, logic flows, brainstorming sketches, and workflows can all be stored and versioned alongside your project data—right within your git or GitHub repositories.

Built-in version control

IdeaBoard’s .board files come with optional built-in revision control. Since whiteboard content often evolves, tracking changes and revisiting previous versions is essential. The integrated revision system lets you view, compare, and restore past versions of your whiteboard projects - all without needing any cloud support.

What’s Missing in File Mode?

While file mode offers many unique advantages, it does not include some features available in the online version of IdeaBoard, such as:

1. Video conferencing and chat
2. Comments or collaborative tools
3. Real-time editing in the cloud

These features remain exclusive to the online IdeaBoard experience.

Can I use IdeaBoard file mode ?

File mode is exclusive to IdeaBoard’s business yearly plans and is designed specifically for enterprise needs. It’s not available on all plans. For more details and pricing, please visit our pricing page.