Create Interactive Content with Thinglink
ThingLink resources consist of separate scenes - much like website pages or PowerPoint slides. Each scene starts with a background image or video (in standard or 360° equirectangular format) or a 3D model, onto which you can add tags to. These enable your resources to become interactive.
Login to ThingLink by going to the ThingLink Azure login page.
Select the Media option from the left side menu and then select the Create button on the top-right. A number of content types will then be displayed. Each type will provide different options for creating, uploading and searching for content. Whatever you choose can then be used as backgrounds for your scenes.
The ThingLink interface will help you to build your interactive content through prompts and tool tips as you work. You can add Text and media tags to your backgrounds, allowing users to open additional media types such as text, images, videos, 3D models, and PDF files. These will display on-top of your backgrounds. Sound files can also be embedded as background and in-tag audio.
- Additionally, you can use the Embed tag to embed online content such as YouTube, MS Forms, Google Maps, web pages, and other Thinglink scenes.
- You can use Transit tags to send a user to a new scene, creating a narrative or tour (much like adding slides in PowerPoint). A short video demo on how you can using Transit tags is available.
- Other options include a Text label tag, Question tag and Poll tag.
- You can also add Anchors to your tag, which allows you to point your tag towards something on your background (useful for when you do not want your tag to cover-up something behind it).
Staff can also make resources available as downloadable, offline Virtual Reality (VR) experiences. Students can then engage with these resources using VR headsets and joystick controllers, such as those available in HELIX. However, certain online features in ThingLink will not be available in VR. There is ThingLink VR Guidance available from the HELIX SharePoint site.
Step-by-step guides
To learn how to create interactive content please review the following guides, this guidance is appropriate for both standard and 360° panorama content:
- How to upload and manage content within ThingLink, (this link will take you to ThingLink's support site)
- Supported file types, formats and specifications, (this link will take you to ThingLink's support site)
- How to use Text and media tags to make your content interactive, (this link will take you to ThingLink's support site)
- How to use anchors with your tags, (this link will take you to ThingLink's support site)
Page last checked: June 2026