It's no secret that the intensity of work and always-on communications are outpacing our ability to keep up. In this year's Work Trend Index, 64% of respondents say they struggle with having the time and energy to do their job.
This constant demand is a digital debt that we carry and it's costing us time and energy that we could be spending collaborating and innovating. At the same time, we crave connection and teamwork now more than ever. A Work Trend Index Special Report found that over two-thirds of business decision makers find team cohesion and social connections challenging in today’s work environment, and 43% of employees feel disconnected from their company.
To connect and innovate, we need a whole new way of working. One that alleviates digital debt and enhances the things only humans can do. To do this, we need tools that enable a new way to work together, leveraging AI to supercharge our people power. We need Microsoft Loop.
Loop is built for the new way of work, supercharged with AI
Microsoft Loop is built for this new way of work and we’re excited to announce today that it is generally available for customers with Microsoft 365-Business Standard, Business Premium, E3, and E5-on web and mobile. Loop brings together people and resources in centralized workspaces - enhanced by AI capabilities that help reduce digital debt and increase human connection, enabling innovation.
Over the past couple years, Loop components have become an indispensable tool for people and teams across the world. These portable pieces of content stay in sync across all the places they’re shared. And this past March we announced the public preview of the Microsoft Loop app. Since then, we’ve been listening to your feedback. Check out all the updates we've made to help you and your team think, plan, and create together. Try Loop now!
Better Meetings
Even as work continues to evolve, meetings remain a critical way to connect, share information and make decisions. But meetings are a major source of digital debt. This year’s Work Trend Index found participants are spending three times the amount of time spent in Microsoft Teams meetings since February 2020. So, while meetings aren't going anywhere, they’re due for a reinvention to help people use time effectively and reduce overbooking and stress.
As part of this reinvention, we recently announced Collaborative notes to help people co-create agendas, take notes, and track tasks efficiently all in a Loop component that stays in sync across the places it’s shared. We’re announcing that Copilot is ready to actively join the meeting. With Copilot in Collaborative notes you can focus on listening and contributing to the conversation rather than taking notes.
During a meeting, Copilot will automatically generate notes during the course of the meeting capturing key pieces of information and adding suggested tasks. Copilot users can even prompt Copilot to note specific content like, "capture what Beth said as a quote". And all meeting participants can also add notes, integrating with Copilot generated ones. Only one participant in the meeting is required to have the Copilot license for the notes to be viewable and editable to all meeting participants. This Copilot capability will roll out to preview next year.
Meetings are often a starting point for projects. Soon, after the meeting, you’ll be able to create a new Loop workspace with the meeting content pre-populated. Not only does this save you time and energy tracking down all those documents and kicking off a new project, it also provides valuable context for others you invite to the workspace. And for a meeting series, meeting content will be automatically added to your workspace after each occurrence. This helps new members get up to speed and enables everyone to refer back so you can easily recall ideas, conversations, and decisions. This capability will be rolling out to preview early next year.
Unlock the power of shared thinking with Copilot in Loop
You might already be familiar with Microsoft Copilot. In Loop, Copilot helps your whole team co-create and organize work, stay up to date and focused, and analyze and edit workspace content.
One of the ways Copilot helps your team is through brainstorming and creation. Copilot enables you to collaboratively create prompts, go back to earlier versions, add language to refine the output, and edit the generated responses to get better results. We’ve introduced several Copilot capabilities to Loop, check them out below.
Loop’s intelligent canvas adapts to you, anticipating your needs. When you start a new page, you’re not starting from scratch. Now Copilot can help you create a Loop page based on your intention. If you are aiming to run a brainstorming session for example, you can choose from suggestions to build out a page template completely custom to you and your needs. Or re-use a page you created before and ask Copilot to modify it for your current scenario. Copilot leverages content from across Microsoft 365 to help you work faster.
Now Copilot helps you generate tables so you can add structure to your plans. Enter prompts like, “Create a table of the schedule for our project” then easily insert the table into your Loop workspace. You can even ask Copilot to help populate the table saving you valuable time. And when you need additional input, you can turn your table into a Loop component and share it across apps.
Copilot also enables you to attach a file as part of your prompt in order to quickly gain understanding of the content. You can ask for an overview of what the file is about, get a sense of who the audience is, or even ask whether there are any insights that are relevant to the current Loop page.
With all the great content your team creates in Loop, you want ways to ensure you are understanding the main points and focusing on what matters. Loop helps everyone get to the point by intelligently summarizing the content of a Loop page. Use the summary for your own understanding or insert it at the top of a page for an easy TL;DR. And of course, you can turn it into a component to share with others.
And when you need to dive deeper, you can use Copilot to ask open ended questions about the content on the page. You can ask questions like “what decisions were made?" or “what questions remain?” This enables you to quickly gain understanding and decide where you need to focus.
Save time as you work on content with Copilot in Loop. For instance, it will help you rewrite existing content so you can communicate your ideas clearly. When you want a little writing help, simply right-click on your content and type a prompt for how you would like to transform it like “make this more concise” or “make this sound more exciting”.
Loop isn’t just for writing words and phrases; you can also use it to write code. When you ask Copilot to provide examples of code, it will suggest a Code block with the programming language you choose, enabling you to collaborate on code right in Loop!
Loop also makes it easy to hand off work to teammates by creating a recap that summarizes the changes you made on a page. You can edit the recap and mention others so they’ll be notified to pick up where you left off. This is especially helpful for teammates in different time zones to keep the project moving forward.
Many of these Copilot capabilities are available today with updates rolling out over the next few months. Copilot requires an additional monthly subscription and is not part of your Microsoft 365 subscription.
Bring back clarity and focus with AI in Loop
In our public preview, customers have been telling us that one of the biggest challenges they face is keeping everyone up to date and in sync on fast-moving projects, especially in the age of flexible work. Since the announcements above, we’ve continued making updates to help provide clarity and make collaboration more natural, intuitive, and streamlined. We’re excited to share the following experiences:
Getting started is often the trickiest step! We previously announced that AI in Loop can help teams kick off their workspace by gathering content related to your workspace title and other keywords. Soon you'll be able to include descriptions of what the workspace is about to get more relevant results. Just explain the space in your own words and choose all the parts you want to include in your workspace. This capability is rolling out by the end of the year.
When you need clarity on the overall progress of a project, Loop is here to help with a generated workspace status. Soon you'll be able to track progress made by the team and get up to speed quickly on everything happening in the workspace, all in one place. The summary highlights the latest team activities like upcoming deadlines, completed tasks, progress label changes, and recaps. Share the workspace status with others to easily keep your partners and stakeholders in the loop. This capability is rolling out early next year.
Teams often struggle keeping up with all the changes that happen in fast moving projects. The new Power Automate integration is here to help. Now you can create a new rule for a table so that your team is notified any time a change is made. For instance, send a Teams channel message when there’s a status change. This capability is rolling out early next year.
Use the apps you love with Loop
We know that being able to use the right tool for the job makes all the difference in your everyday work. We’re continually expanding the toolbox with Microsoft tools and other great apps - check out the latest:
- Loop components in Teams channels: When you want to share just a part of your project with others, simply turn any Loop page into a Loop component. Loop components are rolling out in Teams channels over the next few weeks, making it easier than ever to jam together wherever you're already working.
- Copy and paste components in OneNote: We know many of you love OneNote for your daily organization and notes. This capability is rolling out in preview for OneNote for the web by the end of the year.
- Whiteboard component: Easily visualize your ideas in Loop with the new Whiteboard component. Sketch a flow chart, brainstorm a list, or illustrate a problem together - You can include your whiteboards in your Loop page as a component and share them across Teams (channels and chat), Outlook, Word for the web, and OneNote for the web. This component is rolling out early next year.
- Planner component: Stay in sync across Planner and Loop with the Planner component. Planner helps you stay on track and now with the component in Loop, you can manage project tasks alongside your other project material without having to leave your Loop workspace. To try it, paste a link to your existing Planner plan into a Loop page. This component is available now.
- Github and ADO data integration: Integrate your data right on the Loop page. This capability is rolling out to preview by the end of the year.
- Task syncing: Tasks in a progress tracker component sync across ToDo and Planner to make project management and tracking easier. This capability is available now.
- Jira and Trello data integration: Add Jira and Trello boards to your Loop page for project tracking. These integrations are currently in preview.
- Figma embedded link: Insert an embedded link to your Figma files. The link provides a view of the file which you can navigate or maximize to full view. As changes are made to the file in Figma, you can view them in the embedded link in Loop. This capability is rolling out in preview by the end of the year.
We’re also continuing to work with developers to create more types of Loop components that will be rolling out early next year. These components will be supported in Loop, Teams, and Outlook. Right now, we’re actively working with Zoho’s ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, Miro, Priority Matrix, Profisee, Lucid, and Atlassian. Stay tuned in the new year to learn more!
Share the right info with the right people
Co-creation has no limits, so you need to share information, ideas, and content with the people you're working with whether they are inside your organization or not. We’re currently working on sharing capabilities so that you can share your Loop components, pages, and workspaces with those outside your company. This enables you to use the power of Loop with partners, customers, vendors, and more! Simply use the share button to invite someone to an entire workspace. And you can still easily view who a component or page was shared with and where it was shared by using the menu in the top right corner. This capability will be rolling out to preview early next year.
For IT professionals managing apps, we know data storage is critical. Loop workspaces and the content created in workspaces are backed by Syntex repository services which can be managed using Cloud Policy. And we're excited to announce that Loop now supports eDiscovery. Loop workspaces are managed just like files in OneDrive. They also respect the same controls and policies you may have already configured in Microsoft Purview. You can find and audit any matches for Loop content with sensitive information in OneDrive or Microsoft Syntex, just like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.
You asked, we listened
Since the public preview of Loop, we have been soaking up all the great customer feedback. We're excited to roll out some of the top requested capabilities. Now you can include Code blocks on your Loop page. Copy and paste in parts of code across the following coding languages; BAT, C, C++, C#, CSS, PlainText, Java, Javascript, Markdown, Typescript, Python, SQL, Shell, Powershell, and HTML or start a block of code right on the page. Loop also now supports markdown to easily include page formatting. Code blocks is available now.
If you need a little inspiration, you can find Loop page templates crafted to help you get started in the Loop app or at Microsoft Create. New, localized page templates are available now. By the end of the year, you’ll be able to create your own custom page templates and save them in the Loop template gallery, making it easier to re-use existing pages.
You can make your pages even more dynamic with videos! Now videos from Stream and YouTube can be embedded in the Loop page so you can play them right in the canvas. And when you have feedback that would take too long to write, just record yourself right from the Loop page. Your teammates can view the recording easily! Video recording is currently in preview.
Stay organized
Organization is key to successful projects - We’ve been working on ways to make organizing your project with Loop even easier. You can now add a table of contents at the top of your Loop page. Your team can quickly go to the most relevant info by clicking the links in the table of contents. And with collapsible sections and headers on the Loop page coming soon, it's easier to stay focused on the parts that matter in the moment. You can even access your recent components right from the home page or workspace so you can view any component that was recently shared with you or created by you including meeting notes.
Ever wish you could create a carbon copy of that great Loop page? Well now you can! Simply duplicate a Loop page so you can update and adjust it without changing the original.
Stay in sync on the go
Working on the go provides flexibility for your life. Now the Loop mobile app is generally available so you can take advantage of that extra flexibility. We've made some updates to it to make sure you always stay in touch with your work and never miss a beat.
With the Loop app's availability on iPad, you can take advantage of your favorite accessories like the Magic Keyboard or enter text with Apple Pencil and Scribble.
Loop’s mobile app is the perfect way to catch up on your projects. Now it includes push notifications that ensure you won’t miss important updates. The notification takes you to whatever needs your attention. Use comments and reactions to easily give feedback to the team or let them know you are caught up.
During public preview, our customers have enjoyed using Ideas components to capture their thoughts while on the go. Now, you can also create workspaces and workspace pages right from your mobile device so you have even more ways to organize your thoughts on the go.
For IT professionals who use Intune for app management on mobile devices, the Loop mobile app now supports app protection policies to ensure your organization’s data remains safe.
Try Loop today
Loop is generally available for Microsoft 365 work accounts so you can try Loop now! Try Loop today on the web. And don’t forget to download the mobile app on iOS or Android!
We love feedback! Please let us know ways we can improve Loop by submitting feedback right in the app or on the feedback portal. Check out additional resources below and keep up with all Loop news by following us on X at @MicrosoftLoop.
Additional Resources
- On Demand Session: Microsoft Loop, Transforming the Way We Work Together
- Support page
- Loop adoption hub
- Mechanics video
- Loop YouTube playlist
- Customer story: check out how Sulava uses Loop to make work smooth:
Sources:
Updated Nov 15, 2023
Version 3.0
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Microsoft
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