Microsoft Loop | The Perfect Tool for Hybrid Work

How we work has changed completely, and the hybrid model is becoming the preferred model for companies. Microsoft wanted to promote this model even more among its suite with Microsoft Loop.

In this tool, we find features of Notion and Microsoft Fluid, although with a newer interface and concept, where they want to do away with the usual large number of open windows to work simultaneously. We explain its features and peculiarities!

What is Microsoft Loop?

Microsoft Loop is an application that combines a robust and flexible interface with portable components that can be moved between the other applications of the Microsoft suite in a simple and synchronized way.

The main objective of Loop is to centralize all tasks to improve the organization of a team in real-time. Wangui McKelvey himself, General Manager of Microsoft 365, defined it as follows: “New types of content, formats, and channels demanded more flexible, powerful and fluid tools to allow everyone to deliver a more impactful message and collaborate at their own pace. That’s why Microsoft is evolving with the times”.

Microsoft Loop Elements

There are three main elements in Microsoft Loop: workspaces, pages, and components.

Workspaces

As its name suggests, it provides looped shared spaces that allow you and your team to see and group all the crucial elements of a project. It makes it easy to know what everyone is working on and track shared documents’ progress.

Pages

We find a canvas to organize our components and extract valuable elements such as links, files, or data that fit the specific needs of our project.

We can think of it as a whiteboard where we can insert and share components that may have been created outside the application itself.

Components

These are atomic units of productivity that allow you to collaborate throughout the workflow (chat, email, meeting, document, etc.). Loop components range from lists or notes to more sophisticated elements such as sales opportunities in Dynamics 365. They can exist in multiple applications and are updated in real-time.

Benefits Microsoft Loop

Having such a collaborative and unitary tool seems impossible, but these are the significant advantages of Microsoft Loop:

• Cooperation: The tool allows you to co-create and take advantage of the ideas of the rest of the team, reinventing the way of working as a team.
• Everything in one place: You can organize all the elements needed for a project (files, links, data from other apps) in a single workspace.
• Real-time synchronization: It is effortless to use and facilitates the tracking of progress and co-creation of materials through notifications, status tagging, task lists, and more etc.

Microsoft Loop vs. Notion

If you are familiar with Microsoft Fluid and Fluid Components, the elements presented by Loop are probably familiar to you. And it’s evident because they share the same ones. Since it was introduced a few months ago, Microsoft has been working on reinventing office documents through utterly new software, but based exclusively on the Fluid concept.

In addition, for those of you who have had the opportunity to use Notion, the collaborative tool launched by the now-defunct Google Wave, it is sure to be very familiar to you.

Loop is clearly inspired by this online collaborative editor, which also allows creating notes, documents, managing projects, tasks, etc. All from the same app, organized in blocks and with cloud-based cross-platform synchronization. Besides, it is also with hundreds of templates, although with a more minimalist interface.

We can’t yet say who will generate the most users on their hybrid tool, but Microsoft has come on strong with Loop.

Collaboration with AI in Microsoft Loop

One of the significant new features Microsoft has included in the app is to harness the potential of artificial intelligence to reinvent collaboration.

To achieve that boost through AI, Microsoft has introduced the Experiments tab within the Loop settings, a place to access cutting-edge features.

Copilot in MS Loop

In fact, one of the new features introduced in Loop is Copilot.

With AI-driven suggestions, Copilot generates content based on what you ask it to create. Being integrated into Loop, the content will be generated collaboratively for members of an organization.

This option offers four buttons to serve as inspiration: Create, Brainstorm, Blueprint, and Describe, but it also leaves open the possibility to write requests from scratch.

Some of the example use cases for Copilot in Loop are:

• Start and modify new content: it helps you write a newsletter or generate a list of ideas to implement. Always with the possibility of editing the text.
• Make a plan and put it into action: Copilot can suggest some of the steps to develop your work.
• Test different tones: the tool allows you to explore different tones in a draft and helps you to reformulate it according to your intention

 Jumpstart workspace

Sometimes it isn’t easy to get a project up and running because the components are scattered. Switching from one application to another or connecting all the resources we need manually can be very difficult to achieve an effective workflow.

Jumpstart takes care of laying those foundations. It is designed to help you quickly choose the initial materials, thanks to a set of suggestions powered by artificial intelligence. It allows you to bring meaningful content from SharePoint or OneDrive for Business into a single workspace without leaving Loop.

In fact, depending on the workspace name, an initial set of files is displayed. Giving Loop more context with a set of keywords will cast a wider net with more suggestions. From here, all that remains is to shuffle through the results tabs, select the files you want to extract, and click Create.

It is possible to include content from applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Loop, etc., is possible. In short, from any application that has access to your business account.

Coming soon, Loop will also include new AI-powered features, such as helping you understand everything that happened when you returned from a vacation through the new summary capabilities. This will allow you to stay more connected with the team and keep you in sync, even if one member has been away.

Don’t miss our explanatory post if you want to know more about the best Microsoft 365 tools.

And if you want to know which solution best suits your business, contact us and we will study your case in a personalized way.