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Step by Step Facilitators’ Guide to Discovering Miro
For trainers and facilitators who want to start using Miro in their virtual workshops - or get better with it
Virtual workshops come with a big challenge: engagement. Without the shared room, the shared energy, the whiteboard in the corner, it becomes much harder to keep participants active, connected, and co-creating with you.
Miro helps enormously with that.
It gives people a shared visual space to think and create in. It makes the process visible. It invites participation in a way that a plain video call simply cannot.
And for complex processes, ones with multiple steps, lots of content, or group work that needs to come together into something bigger, Miro is often what makes facilitating those processes virtually actually possible.
But it can also be wonderful for fairly simple, easy-going workshops. A way to give your session more visual support, more active participation, and more of that "we are building something together" feeling.
Yet, while one of the most versatile tools for virtual facilitation, training & workshops, Miro can be challenging to get comfortable with (especially when you encounter it for the first time).
Precisely because it offers a wide range of features and options, and a lot of flexibility in how you use the tool, there is no single path in learning it. Each trainer might need diverse features & possibilities, and what is relevant for one could be unnecessary for someone else.
My advice is:
Start simple. Learn the few things you really need. Start using them in workshops, one at a time. Then keep building from there.
With this article, I want to give you a practical starting point, so you can begin using Miro with confidence, without trying to learn everything at once, and with a clear idea of where to keep exploring as you keep growing your skills in Miro.
Don’t get overwhelmed by the abundance of features - scan through this article to see what is out there and what exists, but then start exploring it one step at a time.
Start simple. Learn the few things you really need. Start using them in workshops, one at a time. Then keep building from there.
With this article, I want to give you a practical starting point, so you can begin using Miro with confidence, without trying to learn everything at once, and with a clear idea of where to keep exploring as you keep growing your skills in Miro.
Don’t get overwhelmed by the abundance of features - scan through this article to see what is out there and what exists, but then start exploring it one step at a time.
Step 1: Start small - learn just enough to begin
The most important tip: Get your hands dirty fast
Build one simple board for one real session. Notice what works, notice what feels clunky, and improve from there. In each following workshop, try one new thing.
That is how confidence with Miro grows: not by mastering everything at once, but by using it, reflecting, and building your toolkit step by step.
Miro is an interactive, visual and spatial tool. You will find that "playing" in a live board teaches you far more about the platform's features & behaviours than hours of passive watching ever could. Test, build, tear down, and test some more.
Miro at a glance
Start by checking out this 3-minute video first to understand what Miro is & understanding of how Miro is used as a tool.
Learn with Miro Academy webinars & learning paths
One of the best go-to places to learn more about Miro is Miro Academy.
You can choose one of the two best starting points:
1 - For structured and comprehensive learning, dive into webinars and longer learning pathways: scroll down in Miro Academy for "per role" and pick Miro for Beginners, or pick one of the upcoming Miro webinars (on top of the Academy page).
2 - For a quick grasp of many different tools & features, check out the great, very short & practical Miro videos on YouTube for quick discovery of diverse specific features.
The challenge with Miro Academy and Miro Youtube can be that you will find a huge number of features here, and without knowing what might be useful features for you, it can become slightly overwhelming.
That is why, later in this article, you can find lists of some of the most useful features for facilitators, and the 30 min video linked below might be of great help to have a quick overview of what might be the most interesting features for you.
Step 2: Miro for Facilitators: Best features to use in your workshops
When should you even use Miro? How to decide
One of the real challenges with Miro is that, if your participants are not used to it, it takes them a bit of time to get on board. That means Miro might not be the best tool for every workshop, and when you choose to use it, it’s a good idea to plan how will you onboard the participants.
A few tips to decide when Miro is the right call:
- Use it for workshops where that extra interaction is genuinely worth it, even if onboarding your participants to the tool might take 10 minutes or so at the start
- If onboarding time might cost more than it gives (for example, a very big group or a short session), consider using Miro Engage instead (more on that below). It lets people participate without needing a Miro account, though it is a separate paid subscription worth weighing up against how often you'd use it
When you use Miro, in advance of your workshop with Miro, I would suggest to:
- Send participants an invite to create a free Miro account in advance, or at least make sure they have a login ready and know they can log in before the session starts
- Plan 5 to 10 minutes at the start of your workshop to introduce Miro, show the features you will be using, and make sure everyone feels comfortable before diving into the content
Core Miro features to check before your first workshop
Here are the features I would make sure to know before running your first workshop, grouped into four areas.
Getting your organization right
- Learn the difference between spaces, sections, boards, and frames - understanding this hierarchy early saves a lot of confusion later
- Set up your naming system and spaces early. Once your boards start multiplying, a good naming convention is what keeps things findable. A small habit that pays off hugely over time
- Get in the habit of using frames from the start. Once things live inside frames, they are much easier to lock, hide, copy to another board, or reorder for presentation mode. Working without frames feels fine at first, but limits you quickly
Controlling what participants see & do during the session
- How to hide and show frames depending on what you want visible at each moment
- Look into the difference between frames and slides and choose which one to use when (slides are more rigid and linear, frames give you more flexibility)
Setting up the board for participants
- How to share a board and how to set the right access level for your participants
- How to lock objects and frames so they don't get accidentally moved or changed during a session, and how to control whether participants can unlock things
- Check and fix the order of your frames: Important thing to keep in mind: frames in presentation mode are shown in the order they were created, not the order they appear on the board.
Essential facilitator’s features you will wanna know
- Bring everyone to me - one of the most useful facilitator buttons, letting you pull everyone's view to where you want them looking
- Presentation mode and how it works with frames
- Timer - such a simple feature, but it genuinely changes the energy of a room. Great for keeping group activities focused and on pace
Step 3: Add more interaction once the basics feel easy with these Miro features
Once the basics are in place, these are the features I would point you to next - the ones that make Miro genuinely interactive, playful, and visually rich for participants:
- Sticky note stacks & packs - a clever way to prepare and distribute sticky notes to participants so they can quickly grab and contribute without starting from scratch
- Spin wheel - a simple but delightful tool for randomising, picking names, choosing groups, or adding a little playful surprise to an activity
- Dot voting - the built-in voting session is great for prioritisation and group decisions
- Interactive sticker voting - a more playful alternative. With interactive stickers, whoever clicks on one casts a vote. A much more playful feel than a formal vote
- Flip cards - useful for reveals, reflection prompts, quizzes, or any moment when you want a bit of suspense and participation
- QR code generator - a really easy way to link people to resources, external forms, or for connecting Miro Engage sessions
- Turn on Private mode - when you want participants to write on stickies, without seeing what other’s are writing until end of private mode (keep in mind: you can leave the inputs anonymous forever, or just till end of the Private mode activity)
- Digitize handwritten stickies - if some of your participants are more comfortable working on paper (or if you are running a hybrid session with people both in the room and online), they can write on real sticky notes, snap a photo, and Miro will import them as digital stickies
- Add your brand colours to the Miro colour palette - Miro lets you save custom colours so your boards stay visually consistent with your brand. A small touch that makes your boards look more polished and "yours"
- Exploring Miro AI - Miro's AI has many uses for facilitators. Example: using AI for clustering sticky notes into themes and extracting insights from a board into a structured document. Genuinely useful for closing out a brainstorm or retrospective without manually sorting everything
- Miro Engage - a pack of diverse interactive activities to make your session more engaging (see more on this below)
- Integration with Zoom - Miro board integrates with Zoom via Zoom Apps so you can collaborate with participants directly in the Zoom call, instead of having them go to Miro board and needed to login there. (Keep in mind: this does come with some limitations, so pick intentionally when to use it).
Miro Engage: Your toolbox for engagement & a completely different way to use Miro
Miro Engage is Miro's dedicated engagement tool for meetings and workshops, and a bit different group of features than the rest of Miro tools.
It lets you run interactive activities like polls, multiple-choice questions, and open-ended questions directly from your board, with participants' responses visualised in real time.
What makes it especially useful for facilitators:
- Participants do NOT need a Miro account to join, nor do they need to log into Miro. They can participate by scanning a QR code or entering a simple code on their phone or browser. Which makes it a great fit for those bigger or shorter sessions where full Miro onboarding would be too much
- It works well with Miro Slides (for more structured, linear sessions) or placed anywhere on your regular board
- Keep in mind: It is a separate paid subscription on top of your Miro plan, so it is worth deciding whether it fits the kinds of sessions you run before adding it to your setup.
Discover more about Miro Engage and all its features here.
A few honest limitations to keep in mind when using Miro
Miro is brilliant, but there are a few things it does not yet do well. Worth knowing in advance so you don't get caught out:
- Participants can struggle with it a bit the first time they use it, especially if they are not tech savvy. Worth building in that buffer time for onboarding and patience
- Poor connection causes delays and struggles. If any of your participants has an unreliable connection, they will feel the lag in Miro more than in a plain video call. Something to flag in advance so they can prepare
- Importing PowerPoint slides is still clunky. PPTs land either as static images (losing any animation) or as Miro Slides (less flexible than frames, though you can convert them to frames later). If your content lives in PPT, plan for some rework
- Animations are not supported in presentation mode. My workaround: build several frames or slides, each showing one more piece of the final view, and flip through them in sequence to mimic an animation. Works nicely for reveals or step-by-step builds
Before your first workshop: a quick checklist
A short pre-flight check to run through before going live:
☐ Make sure participants have their log in ready; and that you planned 5-10 minutes to onboard them on Miro
☐ Test board sharing with a fresh browser or a colleague
☐ Check participant permissions are set the way you want them
☐ Lock anything that should stay locked
☐ Decide which frames participants should see, and hide the rest
☐ If not using Slides feature, check the order of your frames in the Frames panel and fix it if needed
☐ Find "bring everyone to me" button (trust me, you will need it)
☐ Walk through your presentation flow once end-to-end
☐ Test any interactive features you plan to use
☐ If you are using Miro Engage, test the join experience from a participant's perspective
A small habit that makes my life easier
One personal practice worth sharing: I keep a couple of boards with my favourite frame templates - sections, layouts, and little design bits I have made and liked. Whenever I am building a new board, I know where to find them, and I can copy and reuse them instead of rebuilding. Huge time-saver, and it also means my boards develop a consistent visual style over time. It really helps to build this habit early.
And when you are looking for more inspiration or ready-made structures for specific exercises or workshop formats, remember that Miroverse is full of templates worth exploring (more on this later).
(And remember that you can import a lot of your previous materials, such as slides and images, into Miro - just keep in mind slide-related limitations mentioned earlier!)
Step 4: Make your Boards clearer & better designed
A well-designed Miro board is not just about aesthetics.
More than anything, it's about functionality, making your board easy to navigate, easy to read, and intuitive to move through.
It’s also about creating a visual support for the process that you are designing for your participants.
But a great board design can go well beyond that.
It can surprise, delight, encourage, lead the eye, and provide clarity at just the right moment.
More importantly, it shapes how your participants feel as they work, and that is a quiet but powerful part of the experience you are designing.
But don't get intimidated by that.
As with everything, start with the basics:
This 4 min video on 10 design tips by Miro is a great place to start. Quick, practical, and full of small tips you can apply right away for a noticeable win on your next board.
After that, here are 2 resources that have seriously upleveled my own board design:
- Insightful Substack article by Carol Poll: Carol is one of the sharpest board designers around, and this is a proper dive into the principles behind boards that feel clear, polished, and thoughtfully designed. (While both the Miro video and Carol's article are framed around designing for Miroverse, the tips apply to any workshop board you build.)
- CNVS, by Lucie Agolini, is a beautifully designed, customisable icon set that I would highly recommend buying once you start using Miro a bit more. It will make your boards look better AND feel more joyful to design.
(More on both Carol's & Lucie's work below.)
Step 5: Look for advanced ideas and inspiration
What’s the next level of using Miro?
Don’t get entangled into using Miro as a copy of your physical workshops - instead, embrace the infinite space that you can play with!
Once you get used to the platform, you will uncover opportunities for creativity and activities that aren't possible in a physical space - such as embedding a board within a board, having exercise pathways designed in a unique way, using AI in different steps of your facilitation, and much more.
When looking for new ideas and inspiration, I turn to two resources: Miroverse & people
Miroverse - a rich library of ideas & templates that extend way beyond Miro
Miroverse is an incredible source of ideas, and I use it for two things:
- to find templates for a specific use case. Type in the name of an exercise, process, or workshop format, and you will often find useful and diverse templates ready to adapt.
- to find inspiration. It is also a great place to discover new ways of working, new exercises, and new structures you may not have thought of yourself. Not just to use in Miro, but to use in all the different contexts as facilitator.
Miro Community - space to connect & get updates
Another great place to get ideas, but also to discuss any or ask others for help or feedback. The community is also a great place to get the first peak into new features and stay up to date with product updates.
Want to keep on exploring Miro for facilitators?
Carol Poll wrote a great guest article on the Trainers Toolbox blog on exactly this topic: How to use Miro as a facilitator. A practical next read once you are comfortable with the basics here.
My favorite people for Miro inspiration
Said Saddouk, aka Facilitainer
Said's LinkedIn is one of my favourite places to get a bit of energy on a busy day, as he brings the fun side into facilitation conversations, while also sharing many practical tips on Miro and other tech tools for virtual facilitation.
Follow Said on LinkedIn and find more of his work (including great webinars on Miro) on his Luma calendar and many useful tech tips on YouTube channel.
Carol Poll
Carol is an inspiring designer and clear thinker who has created more than 100 templates on Miroverse. From her you can learn about board design but also about the design of a smart, clear, functional facilitation process. Browse her Miroverse templates for some great visual ideas.
Follow her on LinkedIn, and make sure to check out her guest article on the Trainers Toolbox blog on how to use Miro as a facilitator.
Rachel Davis
Rachel is a wonderfully creative mind, and joining one of her Miro Board Improv sessions is a sure way to leave with your head full of fresh ideas. Follow Rachel on LinkedIn and find her upcoming Miro Board Improv sessions on her Luma calendar.
Lucie Agolini
Lucie is the designer behind CNVS, a beautifully customisable icon set I would highly recommend once you are using Miro a bit more. It will make your board design so much better and so much more joyful.
Lucie is also a wonderful source of inspiration for board design, sharing so many ideas and truly impressive designs, so keep an eye on her LinkedIn and especially on her Luma calendar for upcoming webinars.
Keep an eye on the New Stuff (coming up all the time)
Miro is constantly adding new features, so making "What's New" a regular habit in your workflow is worth it.
To stay up to date with all the novelties keep a close eye on:
- Content from the latest Canvas event: Every year, there is an event that presents all new features released
- Miro Academy for the newest updates
- Product updates in the Community
Step 6: Keep on discovering Miro
Miro is one of those tools that takes you down the rabbit hole fast - and while it takes a bit to kickstart with it, it gives you more and more value the deeper you dive in.
So my final piece of advice: start small. Build one simple board for one real session. Notice what works, notice what feels clunky, adjust. Next time, try one new thing.
You won't even notice how fast you will move from "new to Miro" to "confident in Miro".
Let's keep learning together
If this was useful and you would like to keep exploring tools, techniques, and ideas for trainers and facilitators, here is how we can stay connected:
Connect with me on LinkedIn - I share many ideas, reflections, and resources there, and I would love to learn alongside you.
The Trainers Toolbox podcast - many episodes full of practical inspiration for trainers and facilitators. You can find it on [Spotify] [Apple Podcasts] [YouTube].
Don't miss the episode with Carol Poll, where we dive deep into designing Miro boards that actually support great facilitation.
Trainers Conversations Community - an online community of trainers & facilitators here on Trainers Toolbox, where we share learnings, tools, and inspiration throughout the year. We actively use Miro in our community calls, which means one of the many things you'll discover over the year is different ways of how to use Miro in practice. It is also an experimental and fun space to try things out and practice, instead of experimenting in your live workshops.
Enjoy your Miro discovering - and do share what from this article you found useful (best way to connect is on LinkedIn)!
