Add shapes to your whiteboard to build diagrams and illustrate processes, show relationships, visualize early-stage plans, and more.
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Overview
The Shapes menu in Aha! Whiteboards gives you a rich set of options for diagramming, wireframing, and illustrating visual concepts. Each group of shapes is organized into its own submenu:
Basic shapes: Use rectangles, circles, lines, and simple symbols to sketch quick ideas, label key concepts, and create straightforward flow diagrams.
Advanced shapes: Use advanced shapes to structure information, highlight key details, and create early-stage roadmaps directly on your whiteboard.
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Roadmaps: Aha! shapes , the Aha! existing record shape, and Aha! view shapes are located in the Roadmaps submenu. Aha! shapes represent real Aha! record types in your account — such as initiatives, features, and ideas — that you can convert to real records in your account.
The Aha! shapes you can use or convert to a record depends on the Aha! product plans you are subscribed to.
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Icons: Use icons to draw attention to important items, communicate meaning at a glance, and make dense diagrams easier to scan.
Architectural icons are available within the Icons menu with the Aha! Whiteboard Advanced plan.
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Wireframes: Use wireframe components like devices, controls, placeholders, navigation, and pre-built blocks to sketch realistic screens and user flows on your whiteboard.
Wireframe components are available with the Aha! Whiteboards Advanced plan.
Business processes (BPMN): Use BPMN shapes to document business processes with standard notation so that teams share a consistent understanding of each step and handoff.
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Custom shapes: Use custom shapes to save objects that you reuse frequently so that you can add them to new whiteboards quickly and maintain consistency. You can save custom shapes to the current whiteboard, to your personal custom shapes, or to workspace custom shapes.
Custom workspace shapes are available with the Aha! Whiteboards Advanced plan.
Use the dropdown at the top of the Shapes menu to switch between these submenus. Use the search bar to quickly find a specific shape by name.
Create and edit shapes
Create a shape by clicking the Shape icon on your toolbar and choosing a shape. Then click into your whiteboard to insert it.
Resize a shape by selecting and dragging its corners.
Rotate a shape by selecting the rotation icon and dragging it to your desired angle.
Format a shape using the customization options above it — you can edit the fill color and opacity or the line weight, color, and style.
Add text to an object by clicking the object, then begin typing. Align text you have added to an object by selecting the object and clicking the Align button.
Add a comment with the comment icon on the shape's toolbar.
Lock the shape so that it cannot be edited.
Use the More options menu to cut, copy, paste, link to, or group the shape, as well as bringing it forward or back in relation to other objects.
Use the Pin icon in the upper right of your Shapes menu to keep it open — so you can add multiple shapes at once.
Connect shapes
Shapes often exist in relationship to other shapes — and just as often, you need to add duplicates of the same shape. You can do both of these things easily:
Click one of the small blue dots that appear outside the shape's border. This will create a copy of the shape joined by a connector to the original.
Click and drag to create a connector without creating another shape. If you end the new connector in another object's small blue dots, those two objects will remain connected even if they are moved later.
Add a link to a shape
Help people navigate complex whiteboards and focus on what matters. Link a shape to another whiteboard object. You can also link a shape to a URL outside your whiteboard to direct users to outside resources.
Select a shape and select its More options menu. Then choose Link to.
A link field will open at the top of your screen. Paste in a URL here or select another object on your whiteboard to link to it.
Click Confirm to save the link.
The linked object displays a small arrow icon to its upper right to signal that it has a link.
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People can click the arrow to navigate to the link's destination.
If the destination is another whiteboard object, the link will navigate them directly to the object's location on your whiteboard.
If the destination is outside your whiteboard, it will open the link in a new browser tab.