How should I distinguish different meanings of connections on a whiteboard?

Use a written legend + consistent visuals. A Busabase whiteboard (Excalidraw-style canvas) does not assign business meaning to a line by itself — colleagues will assume “solid = sequence” unless you say otherwise.

*Diagram · whiteboard connection legend*

A practical convention

Pick one visual rule and stick to it on the board (and ideally across the Space):

Optional: color as a second cue (e.g. blue = Next, purple = Depends, gray = Related) — but labels beat color alone for color-blind readers and screenshots.

How to set it up

1. Put a small Legend sticky in a corner of the whiteboard with the three rows above.
2. When drawing, type the short label on every connector.
3. In a linked Doc (or the board title note), repeat the same legend in one sentence so people opening only a screenshot still see the rule.
4. Prefer fewer meanings. If you need a fourth (“blocks”, “owns”), add it to the legend before drawing more lines.

How to verify

• Ask a teammate who did not draw the board: “What does this dashed line mean?” — they should answer from the legend without guessing.
• Export / screenshot: labels remain readable at normal zoom.
• Process swimlanes that are truly sequential should use only Next arrows; mix-ins of Related should be obvious.

Boundaries

• Do not encode meaning only in arrowheads you remember from another tool — rewrite the legend on this board.
• Avoid overloaded one-letter codes unless the legend is always visible.
• If the map is becoming a real workflow engine, keep the whiteboard as communication and put executable status transitions in a Base — the board stays the shared picture.

Happy to suggest a tighter legend if your process only needs two meanings (sequence vs dependency).