Microsoft's Loop app takes a new approach to the traditional Microsoft Office apps by bringing portable components that can be shared and edited across different apps.

With Microsoft Loop, gone are the days when you had to switch to a specific Office app to edit a particular component like a table, list, or note. Here's everything you need to know about Microsoft's Loop app and what makes it exciting in the collaborative space.

The New Approach to Real-Time Collaboration Using Microsoft Loop

Microsoft Loop is a new app that features blocks of dynamic content that can be shared across Office apps and updated in real-time. You can edit a Loop component in any Office app without opening a specific app.

Loop is built on Microsoft's Fluid framework, which the company unveiled during its 2020 Build developer conference. In order to understand how Loop works, you should know its primary building blocks: Loop components (previously called Fluid components), Loop pages, and Loop workspaces.

You can think of Loop components like Lego blocks of Office content. Loop components can include simple things like tables and notes but can also be much more sophisticated. And in addition to the usual graphs, tables, notes, etc., in Office apps, Loop components will also include newer blocks of content like a voting table and a status tracker.

All Loop components are shareable across apps and, even better, allow for collaboration across apps, so you can jump in and edit them from whichever app without switching. You can edit a Loop component right inside your email app, a chat in Microsoft Teams, or a Loop page. Loop components are always in sync, just like Google Docs documents, so you're confident that you're looking at the latest version of a project.

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Loop pages, on the other hand, as the name suggests, are a single place for organizing your Loop components. Lastly, Loop workspaces are a hub for viewing and tracking the progress of all your projects. Workspaces act like a whiteboard that gives you a bird's-eye view of projects in Loop pages and their respective Loop components.

Microsoft Loop Availability

Loop components will officially be available starting November 2021 across Microsoft 365 apps, including Teams, Outlook, and OneNote. However, the app itself will be launched “in the upcoming months”, according to the company.

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Microsoft Loop Is Reshaping Collaboration

Being able to jump in and edit different content blocks without switching apps is a great idea, and Microsoft hopes developers will be able to take advantage of its open-source Fluid framework as well.

If that happens, you will be able to share and edit Loop components across a wide variety of apps outside of Microsoft's Office environment.