All CT Businesses Need to Know About Microsoft Loop
For years, work routines were clearly established. Email was used for communication, and most content was created in documents, worksheets, and presentations. However, the world has changed in the past 2 years, and we’ve had to adjust to a new workplace environment in which individuals have had to complement traditional methods of communication and in-person collaboration with alternatives, quickly digitizing everything we do in our lives.
Furthermore, communication shifted to virtual meetings and chat, and digital information soon proliferated, spilling out beyond standard document formats into more fluid, interactive spaces. More flexible, robust, and fluid tools were required to allow everyone to present a more compelling message and participate at their own pace as new types of material, formats, and channels emerged.
Microsoft Loop is a breakthrough app by Microsoft that combines a powerful and versatile canvas with portable components that can move around and stay in sync across apps. It features shared places that enable you and your team to view and group anything relevant to your project, making it simple to keep up with what everyone is engaged in and track progress towards collective goals.
Although Loop is a new application, Microsoft’s Fluid Framework has been laying the ground for it for some time. The Fluid Framework, which Microsoft first announced two years ago, breaks down barriers across Microsoft 365 apps by permitting app components like tables, charts, and lists to be integrated into different apps and modified in real-time by many users. For instance, if you incorporate Microsoft Loop in Outlook or Teams, alterations to an inventory list table or modifications to meeting notes in OneNote will be instantaneously visible.
Microsoft Loop Elements
Microsoft Loop is made up of three elements: Loop pages, Loop components, and Loop workspaces.
Loop Pages
Loop pages are versatile canvases on which you may organize your components and add additional valuable elements such as files, links, or data to enable teams to think, network, and collaborate. Pages are designed to encourage collaborative thinking and the completion of tasks. They might begin small and expand to fit the scope of your ideas and objectives.
Loop Components
Fluid components are atomic units of productivity that enable you to collaborate and get tasks done in a chat, mail, meeting, document, or Loop page. Loop components are built to accomplish one thing without relying on other modules. Each component serves as a container for a specific sort of data. Loop components can be as basic as lists, tables, notes, and tasks or as intricate as a customer sales opportunity from Microsoft Dynamics 365. Because they stay in sync no matter the location, you and your colleagues always work with the most up-to-date information. These components include a voting table that allows teams to easily ideate, generate consensus, and reach final decisions together. It also features a status tracker that will assist you in collecting information from your team, measure progress on all elements of your project, and keep your entire team up to date.
Additional Loop components are incoming, starting with Dynamics 365 records, used to facilitate your business workflows. Beyond the components created by Microsoft, third-party application developers can create Loop components at low cost by expanding their current message extension applications and Microsoft Graph connectors integrations.
Using Loop Components in Teams Chat
The physical equivalent of a loop component created in Teams chat is a dynamic file stored in your OneDrive for Business account. There can’t be anything else in a message body with a loop component.
When you submit a chat message with a loop component, the fluid file containing the loop component is made available to the chat participants so they can alter the content and view updates as they happen. The default sharing link set in the organization’s sharing policy is applied to loop components sent in Teams conversation. According to the sharing policy’s settings, you may alter the sharing link to utilize whatever permissions you like.
The Teams mobile client allows you to read and modify loop components both on iOS and Android). The first time you open a component, there is a slight latency, but the interaction is smooth afterward.
The autosave system used by Office programs is similar to the synchronization used to make updates available to everyone having access to a loop component, but the loop version is much faster. This could be because synchronization occurs more frequently (as each character is entered), and each transaction processes fewer quantities of data.
Loop Workspaces
Loop workplaces are collaborative environments where you and your team can view and group all of the critical aspects of your project. Workspaces make it simple to keep up with what everyone is working on, respond to colleagues’ ideas, and track progress toward shared objectives. Whenever inspiration strikes, teams can work together synchronously or asynchronously.
Case Sample
Take the example of a team chatting in Microsoft Teams trying to come up with a new tagline for their organization. A team member can flexibly add a poll to the chat using new Loop components, allowing the rest of the team to vote.
It could also be a team leader wanting to know where the current assignment has reached. Amid the chat, the leader can put a Status Checker box where other team members can tick off what they have completed.
Final Word
The Loop application is more of a supplement than a replacement for traditional document-editing software. It is an app with capabilities for real-time and synchronous collaboration, interaction with record systems, and workflow automation that word processors were not cut out for.
Microsoft has been working on these interactive Loop components for a couple of years, and it’s evident that the business has been tweaking Loop to meet the reality of pandemic life. A central Microsoft Loop hub appears to be an improved method to manage and organize various components — and an obvious answer to the new hybrid work era, which many firms are shifting to. For more information on installing and adapting Microsoft Loop for your workflow optimization or other IT managed services, reach out to Realized Solutions today!
