Microsoft Loop
Another new and exciting update from Microsoft is the initial roll out of a solution called Loop. Currently the only place that Loop is provisioned is within Teams Chat. However, Microsoft has begun advertising Loop within Team Channels and additional Microsoft 365 apps, so expect this update in the near future, although there is no current timeline for when that will be available.
What is Loop?
In short, Loop is a dynamic widget that opens within your chat allowing anyone in the group to contribute. The contributions are added inline and the changes are visible to all instantly. Similar to a Word document with multiple coauthors making edits, Loop allows instantaneous coauthoring within Teams. You can use Loop by selecting the small purple icon at the bottom of your Teams chat window located between the attach and emoji icons. There are currently 6 components available in Loop which are: Bulleted List, Checklist, Numbered List, Paragraph, Table, and Task List.
Observations
As with any new feature, there are a few things to keep in mind when using Loop. First, you must @mention a specific individual for them to receive an alert. Just contributing to the Loop will not notify any of the other users of your edits.
The Loop feature is also not available for external guests that may be present in your chat. You can still add a Loop into the chat but the guest will not be able to access it.
When using the Paragraph component, keep in mind that there will be some minor differences if you copy/paste that will likely require reformatting.
Use Cases
When it comes to quick coauthoring, such as ensuring the phrasing of an email is right, it’s an amazing tool and eliminates the need to either create a Word document or provide feedback in a thread of emails.
We have also found it useful to capture multiple entries for a meeting agenda. This replaces the process of telling one person who centralizes the information and adds it to the Outlook event. In the future when Loops is available in Outlook, we anticipate the ability to embed the Loop directly in the Outlook event. For now, we are using the Loops in our recurring meeting chat and creating a new Loop for each meeting agenda.
As for more formal documentation, it may not be the right choice due to the transitive and temporal nature of the information and the inability to end the loop.
How will your team use Loop? Will this feature be beneficial to your organization? We are excited to find out!
Resources
- Microsoft Loop: Flexible Canvas App | Microsoft 365
- First things to know about Loop components (microsoft.com)
- Microsoft Build 2022 Book of News
Do you have any questions for us? Continue the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #AskSympraxis and mention @SympraxisC.