The increasing reliance on remote and (hybrid) work models has increased the importance of productivity tools and applications that facilitate seamless collaboration between workers. This prompted Microsoft to step up its efforts to integrate generative AI technology into its products and launch new products such as the Loop app.
Microsoft last week released a public preview of its Loop Collaborative Workspace app, which aims to make it easier to manage and organize tasks and projects.
So what is the new Microsoft Loop app, what features does it offer, and how do you use it?
First, what is Microsoft Loop?
Microsoft Loop provides a new way to seamlessly manage tasks and projects and collaborate across all your devices with Microsoft Office applications. The application allows users to create documents shared with any Microsoft Office application. Such as: Word, Excel and PowerPoint, let the team think, plan and create together.
Loop mimics the collaborative nature of the Google Workspace desktop app by allowing up to 50 people to work together on a single document at the same time.
The Loop consists of three basic elements: Components, Workspaces, and Pages.
Loop's main advantage is its shareable components, allowing you to share and collaborate with your team in real time on any page. It can also be shared in Teams or Outlook and the component stays in sync with all and can be edited directly in all of them.
Components shared in the Loop app are always up to date and can be edited by team members. For example, if you and your team members are working on a spreadsheet, you can include the sheet as a component of a message in Teams or in an email message. In Outlook, all changes are displayed in a table in all applications.
While you can create components in Pages with pre-made templates to get you started quickly, when you create a new page, templates, themes, and images are suggested based on the keywords you enter.
Workspaces provide collaborative areas where you and your team can have all of your project information in one place so you can easily see what everyone is working on and how they are progressing on their respective tasks.
Second, how do you use Microsoft Loop?
Microsoft has launched a public preview of the Loop app for all users, and to access it, all you have to do is visit the Microsoft Loop website and sign in with your Microsoft account.
start your new community project; You can start with the workspace, where you can enter keywords about your project, and Loop will suggest tools for you to use.
Then, the app creates pages to organize your content, and new pages will suggest templates, themes, and images based on your keywords. If your project requires input from people outside your team, you can only share certain information or components with people outside your organization.
In addition, you can copy and paste components into any Microsoft Office application and share pages as web links or live pages. Users can comment directly on the page or comment from their Outlook email, similar to (Google Docs).
You can also add progress trackers to projects to let people know what to do next, and some Loop tasks can be synced with Microsoft Planner and To Do to create a to-do list for you.
The Loop app can provide notifications on desktop and mobile devices, notifying you of mentions, specific tasks, and replies to comments. The app also provides security and permission controls to protect your data.
In addition, the Loop app includes a new artificial intelligence feature called (Copilot), which Microsoft is introducing in its Office app to help users type text, find new ideas, and get answers to questions as you use Copilot. text format.
Once Copilot has created what you're looking for, you can share it as a loop component in any Microsoft 365 app, a feature that lets you piece information together, edit summaries, and share it with others in real time.