Microsoft Office Suite is a must for most workflows in our personal or professional lives, but the suite was lacking a core element of today's professional workflows - fluid real-time collaboration.
Google Suites have taken the world by storm by offering easy, real-time collaboration and it has changed how people used to imagine working in a group environment.
And this one feature has made Google Suites much popular amongst users around the globe. So, Microsoft needed their own work collaboration platform to compete with Google Suites or applications like Notion.
Microsoft Loop, a hub for a new way of working in Office, is the most significant change to Microsoft's Office documents in decades.
It is the new name for Microsoft's Fluid work, which consists of blocks of collaborative Office content that can exist independently and be copied, pasted, and shared with others.
Loop is going to let its users share and collaborate anything that is done in MS suite applications, be it Word, Excel, or Outlook. Users can change, edit and contribute in real-time even through mails.
Imagine using all sorts of MS suites applications in one dashboard and collaborating with your colleagues at the same time, while being able to visualise the whole workflow for better efficiency and idea creation.
Loop is going to support all of those features and some more news features are likely to be released by the end of 2022.
Microsoft Loop, much like Fluid, has three main components - Loop components, Loop pages, and Loop workspaces.
Loop components are live pieces of content that can exist across multiple apps, are updated in real-time, and are available for anyone to use.
It could be a list shared in a Team’s channel that is also editable in a Loop page or notes in a calendar entry that can be pasted into Outlook and edited in real-time within an email.
These components can also be found in the main Microsoft Loop hub, within what Microsoft refers to as shared Loop workspaces.
It's similar to a project board in which it shows a list of all Loop components and Loop pages, as well as who is currently working on them. Consider it a modern File Explorer, where everything is real-time and collaborative.
Loop pages are individual canvases where Loop components can be shared and collaborated on. It's similar to a modern whiteboard, but far more powerful because you can insert and share components created outside of Loop.
Microsoft has been working on these collaborative Loop components for several years, and it's clear that the company has been trying to adjust how Loop works to cater to the realities of pandemic life.
A central Microsoft Loop hub appears to be a better option to organise these components and a much-needed response to competitors like Notion, as well as to the hybrid work phenomenon to which many professions are adapting.
Since most of us rely heavily on MS suites for our professional works, this is a much welcome initiative from Microsoft.
