As the name of the app suggests, the meeting must be started on an iPad. Yet people can join this meeting from any iOS or Android device, as well as Windows. I tried joining the meeting from a Mac, and while it looked like it would work, it didn’t. From the menu of the app, you can schedule a meeting, join a meeting, or view your uploaded documents.
To start a meeting, you can either create a new “Whiteboard” or use uploaded documents. Anywhere Pad starts you out by giving you an uploaded Quick Guide .pdf. You can invite business associates and friends to a meeting to test out the tutorial and learn the best ways to utilize the app. Clicking on the .pdf gives you a menu at the top that allows you to invite the participants. Once you provide their emails, it will send them an invitation. If they are already signed up with Anywhere, they only need to sign in, but if they haven’t signed up yet, it will give them an option for doing so.
Once the participants sign in, you can assign who will be the presenter. It doesn’t have to be the same person throughout the whole virtual meeting. You can switch control back and forth between everyone. By having only one person in control, however, it saves the document from being marked up accidentally by someone simply trying to view it.
As the presenter, you can make annotations to the documents. It allows you to handwrite notes in different colors, erase, and make sticky notes. It also allows you to use a virtual laser pointer. The laser power and all of the annotations can be seen by all those participating. There is a “View Box” that allows you to switch back and forth between viewing the document in “Shared View” or “Private View.” Every time you switch the page of the document, those sharing your view will be forced to do the same. There is a working browser included as well, allowing you to also view web pages as a group.
To upload documents to be viewed on Anywhere Pad, you can either go to the anywherepad.com portal or box.com if you have an account there. If not, one can easily be created. To do so from your iPad, though, you will have to utilize box.com, as that’s not supported by the anywherepad.com website. The app makes it easy to conduct meetings and business literally “everywhere” as long as the person initiating it has an iPad. It means you can either sit around a boardroom table and exchange ideas without the flood of paper documents, or conduct your meeting on the fly “anywhere” you happen to be. AnyWhere Pad (iTunes store) AnyWhere Pad (Play store)
