Teams annotation and whiteboard in MTRs

Question

Teams annotation and whiteboard in MTRs

Aitor Amozarrain 0

Hi,

I´m exploring Whiteboard an annotations for deployment of digital whiteboards (Touchscreens) for one of our clients.

Issues I´ve found:

*MTR on Android draws very sloppy and pencil tools do not respond (checked with different hardware, accounts and tenants with consistent result). On windows same usage works fine.

*Regarding the inability to start shared annotation or whiteboard from MTR itself, mayor issue arises with guests in the place, as they would usually connect to system via casting app/ dongle/ HDMI cable into the MTR itself. This disables all collaboration chances over their desktop (unless somebody captures and reshares what they are showing). Is there any way we could capture this local guest into the whiteboard at least?

Goal is to bring together 3 participants: Local host, Remote Guest (via Teams) and local Guest (with no access to teams but sitting right in the MTR room) and have them all share desktops and annotate and whiteboard together (while having audio and video feeds of course).

Any idea is higly appreciated.

Thanks for your time

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2 answers

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Answer 1

Liora D 18,915 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Dear @Aitor Amozarrain,

I hope you’re having a good day.

Regarding your second question, based on the current Teams Rooms experience, I am not aware of a supported method to take a local HDMI/casting guest source and turn it into a collaborative Microsoft Whiteboard session that all participants can annotate directly. Microsoft Whiteboard collaboration is designed around meeting participants and shared whiteboards within Teams, rather than external HDMI input sources.

For the scenario you described: Local Host (Teams Room) + Remote Guest (Teams) + Local Guest (HDMI / casting) the biggest limitation is that the local guest connected via HDMI or casting is essentially providing a video source to the room system and is not participating as a Teams or Whiteboard collaborator. As a result, annotation and Whiteboard features are not available to that person in the same way they are for Teams participants.

Regarding the annotation experience on Teams Rooms on Android, Microsoft does support touch-enabled Whiteboard experiences on Android Teams Rooms devices, but since you have already tested multiple devices, accounts, and tenants and are consistently seeing poor pen behavior compared to Windows, I would be interested to know:

Which Teams Rooms on Android device models are being tested?
Which Teams Rooms app version is installed?
Are you experiencing this behavior in Microsoft Whiteboard specifically, or when annotating shared content?

This would help determine whether you are encountering a device-specific issue or a limitation of the current Android implementation.

Based on the collaboration scenario you are trying to achieve, my current understanding is that the most reliable approach would be for all contributors, including the local guest, to join the meeting as participants (even from a secondary device if appropriate). That allows everyone to interact with the same Whiteboard session directly rather than through an HDMI feed.

Your use case is actually a very interesting one, and I believe it highlights a gap that other customers may also encounter when trying to combine in-room guests, remote attendees, Whiteboard collaboration, annotation, and content sharing into a single workflow.

Looking forward to hearing back from you with any updates or additional details.

Warm regards,

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Liora D 18,915 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-07-10T13:40:45.8466667+00:00

Hi Aitor Amozarrain,

I just wanted to follow up to see how things are going with the information I shared above. I truly hope it was helpful and brought you closer to resolving the issue.

If you’ve had a chance to review it and have any updates, questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know. I’m more than happy to assist further if needed.

It would be great to hear back from you!

Warm regards,

Liora.
Aitor Amozarrain 0 Reputation points

2026-07-14T12:15:55.5766667+00:00

Hi,

Regarding Android MTRs; I´ve checked with Logitech Rally Bar and a touchscreen and Yealink Meeting Board Pro with the latest versions pushed from TAC. Behaviour is the exact same: Whiteboard works fine but annotation doesn´t, inking lags terribly compared to whiteboard and pencil tools (colour or thickness selection) do not work at all (if you click on the icons you even get a message to press again to display palette, but doesn´t show).

Regarding the inability to start annotation from the mtr itself, I see no other solution but to include the guest in the Teams meeting as you said, but you know: guests are guests, and they might not even use Teams, we can share their ingested HDMI/dongle/casting into the meeting but simply cannot annotate since it is a MTR share and not a personal one.

I fail to see the reason for these functions to be restricted in MTRs considering the nifty catalog of whiteboards that can hold a MTR, and they would serve as a complete junction of seeing, talking, sharing and drawing. This would also avoid the need for local users having to bring a personal computer into the meeting and simplify intructions to "whoever shares activates annotation"

Thanks for your time
Liora D 18,915 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-07-14T14:50:04.38+00:00

Hi Aitor,

Thank you for the additional details. This is actually very valuable feedback.

Based on your testing across multiple Android MTR platforms, tenants, accounts, and software versions, the fact that the annotation behavior is consistent makes it less likely to be a device-specific issue and more likely a limitation or issue within the current Teams Rooms on Android experience.

I also understand your concern regarding local guests. From a user experience perspective, your scenario is very reasonable: a local presenter sharing through HDMI or casting should ideally be able to participate in annotation workflows without needing a separate Teams device.

However, based on the current Teams Rooms and Whiteboard documentation, Microsoft Whiteboard collaboration is centered around meeting participants rather than local HDMI or casting sources. Whiteboards can be created and shared from Teams Rooms, but I have not found documentation describing a supported method to convert an HDMI/casting source into a collaborative Whiteboard or annotation participant.

Given the consistency of your findings and the practical business scenario you've described, I would strongly encourage submitting feedback directly to Microsoft.

You can do this through:

Teams Feedback: In the Teams client, select Settings and more (...) > Give feedback.

Or via Microsoft Feedback Portal

Microsoft actively reviews and tracks customer feedback, especially when it comes from real deployment scenarios. Over time, many Teams and Teams Rooms features have originated from or been improved based on customer suggestions and recurring feedback from the field. While I cannot guarantee a specific outcome, your scenario is well described, reproducible, and represents a genuine collaboration requirement that could help influence future product improvements.

Thank you again for sharing your findings.

Kind regards,

If you found this answer helpful, please consider selecting "Yes" and upvoting it. This helps make the discussion more visible to other administrators and Teams Rooms users who may be evaluating similar whiteboard and annotation scenarios.

If you decide to submit feedback, feel free to share the Feedback Portal link here as well. Other community members with the same requirement may be able to support it, helping increase its visibility with the product team.

Answer 2

kagiyama yutaka 5,330

I think Teams Rooms on Windows and Android do not turn HDMI or casting input into anything Whiteboard or annotation can work on, and only people joining with a Teams client can use those tools. The easy way is just having the local guest join the same meeting from a phone or laptop and hit Share → Whiteboard, then all three write on the same board.

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