What’s new with Mural: Google Workspace, Microsoft Outlook and Office, tags, and more

This is a jam-packed monthly launch that features many top requests from members — including a Google Workspace integration, tags, and a preview of Microsoft Outlook and Office integrations. Here’s what’s new:

Personalized template and learning recommendations

MURAL’s new Home view is a personalized landing experience tailored to your work and your goals. It visually surfaces relevant templates for your role, content, and information you need to kickstart collaboration — all from one convenient location. 

🏠 Tip: Update your role and team in your profile settings to receive tailored template recommendations. Learn more.

Find, organize, and synthesize sticky notes with tags

A top request in our Community, tags for sticky notes are here! Tags are customizable labels that make it easier to find, organize, and categorize your work in a mural. You can search and filter by tag for easier clustering or export tags to CSV for further analysis. With a deeper level of organization and structure on your sticky notes, it’s easier than ever to prioritize outputs and bring ideas from possibilities to reality.

Your imagination’s the limit to how tags help you accomplish more with your team, but here are some ideas for getting started:

• Assignee names
• Deadlines
• Task status (in-progress, under review, complete)
• Priority (high, medium, low)

And don’t forget to try icons within your tags. Icons can be used as a visual aid to convey a status or theme; this is an inclusive way to categorize ideas without relying on color-coding alone. Tags can also be read aloud using in-canvas screen reader navigation.

🏷 Learn more about tags and sticky notes in this support article.

Bring MURAL into your Google Workspace Docs and Slides workflows

The MURAL App for Google Workspace brings your collaboration outputs directly into the documentation and presentation tools Google users know and love. This new integration makes it simple to find and insert murals directly from Google Docs or Slides — removing the need to switch applications and providing context to your mural links.

💻 Click here to get started with the integration, or click here for additional support.

Screen reader and keyboard features to improve canvas accessibility

Back in February, we launched a beta program supporting the ability to navigate and read in-canvas content using screen reader assistive technology to make MURAL a more accessible and inclusive product. And now, our first iteration of this functionality is generally available to all members.

Members can now navigate between objects on MURAL’s digital canvas using keyboard shortcuts, and may also listen to their textual content — like information on sticky notes or an area title — using a screen reader. Find more information in our support center. 

✨ MURAL’s product team is dedicated to accessibility and inclusive feature design. Don’t miss our support article on accessibility recommendations for facilitators or this new template with best practices. 

MURAL's Microsoft Outlook and Office integrations are now in customer preview

Microsoft just announced that Microsoft Teams collaborative apps designed for Microsoft 365 are in Preview for Outlook and Office.com. MURAL is proud to be one of only a few Preview partners for this new connected experience across Teams, Outlook, and Office! 

MURAL members can get started and find information about how to enroll in the Targeted Release for their organizations (and provide early feedback) at this link.

Crowd optimization for smooth performance in your largest collaboration sessions‍

Every collaboration moment — from 1:1s to all-hands events, huge workshops, and large lectures — is an opportunity to innovate and capture new ideas. Now MURAL has a solution for sessions with a high number of participants: crowd optimization automatically begins with 500 concurrent collaborators in a mural to ensure everyone has a productive, smooth experience.

Facilitators don’t need to plan ahead or manually make changes to support increased collaborators; MURAL will automatically optimize the session based on the number of collaborators. When this threshold is met, facilitators retain their set of Facilitation Superpowers™ to lead engaging sessions, while all other collaborators (members, visitors, and guests) will enjoy a streamlined experience without losing the opportunity to engage. 

👥 Learn more about crowd optimization and the new collaborator thresholds.

And that’s not all! Additional small but mighty updates this month:

• Integrate MURAL with Microsoft Azure Active Directory to automate the provisioning and deprovisioning of MURAL members using SCIM. This feature is an enhancement to our existing Azure AD connector and a critical component of MURAL’s advanced identity management solution. 
• We released a performance improvement that creates a smoother experience on murals with many GIFs while working in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge. Add all the GIFs you want to your team icebreakers!
• MURAL’s Jira integration is now available to all member plans, including Free. This means you’re free to seamlessly plan and execute product strategy with MURAL and Jira Cloud. 
• You can now more easily draw attention to ideas and content on your mural by activating the laser pointer from a button in the top bar of the canvas, in addition to holding the H key. Laser pointer is also now available in presentation mode! 
• The MURAL API early access program is looking for more feedback! Join our beta to explore how you can create integrations, custom apps, and extend visual collaboration with the MURAL API. We can’t wait to see what you build and innovate.