Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Loop, a new collaborative “flexible canvas” app added to Microsoft 365 that allows remote teams to synchronize their work across applications.

Built on Microsoft’s Fluid Framework, Loop enables teams to synchronize their work across multiple applications into one pane and remain in contact easily without the need to context switch. They can organize everything collaboratively within a single document space.

All of Loop’s components are treated as blocks that allow teams to operate right from chats, meetings, emails, documents and more. As a result, nothing collaborative is lost – and even better, anything that the team was working on can be copied and moved to other documents to continue the project.

Each component is dynamic and powered by JavaScript and services that can keep it synchronized across the team and with databases. Anytime anything changes in a component, it is automatically synced across all documents at the same time, for all participants, nobody is left out.

Current complex Loop components include voting tables that make it easy for teams to brainstorm, drive consensus and get down to business quicker. There is also a status tracker, which will help teams gather information from the team in one place, track the project’s progress and maintain an up-to-date view across the team.

Using Loop components, team members can interact together from within different applications at the same time and without interruption. This means that a note from OneNote can be pulled in next to an email from Outlook and both could be updated in real-time by their authors during a collaborative discussion.

Loop also provides two types of project spaces called Loop pages and Loop workspaces. Loop pages are a flexible, infinite canvas where teams can organize components and add anything the team needs to maintain links, files or data. Loop workspaces are a shared spaces that allow a team to group everything important to a project in one place in order to get a quick glance and react to each other’s ideas and track progress.

The capabilities of Loop are designed to span all of the Microsoft 365 application set including Outlook, Teams and OneNote – and will be available in those apps later this month. The standalone Loop app itself will be available sometime in 2022.

Images: Microsoft