Microsoft has launched apps for Loop across web and mobile, the vendor has revealed at Ignite.
The apps are available for consumers, as well as businesses with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium Licences.
In a blog post, Colette Stallbaumer, General Manager of Microsoft 365 and Future of Work, said:
“[Loop is] the app built for the new way of working, with a flexible canvas for collaboration between people and generative AI to create a center of gravity for your projects and a space for your team and Copilot to think, plan, and create together.”
Microsoft describes Loop as “the next-generation cocreation experience that brings together teams, content, and tasks across your apps and devices”.
It is made up of workspaces, pages, and components that interact with each other to help colleagues work in synchronicity.
Workspaces are full projects that contain Pages, which are flexible canvases that feature multiple pieces of contain called components (lists, tables, blocks of text, for example). Components can be shared across the Microsoft 365 portfolio – including Outlook, Teams and Word – and are updated in real-time.
Announced at Ignite, Microsoft has also extended the integration of Loop with Copilot.
The vendor said intelligent page creation will see Copilot suggest pages from past work and
automatically adapting them for projects, and craft a new page with content suggestions tailored towards objectives.
The Loop Story
Microsoft Loop was revealed at Ignite in 2021, with Microsoft hailing it as “the next big breakthrough in Microsoft 365”. At the time, Microsoft said it an app would be arriving soon.
The idea is that documents can be split into smaller, dynamic pieces that can be used across Microsoft’s software suite.
An individual has the capability to produce a note, represented as a Loop component, within Microsoft Teams, for example. The note can then be shared via Outlook and saved on a Loop page. The component will be updated in real-time across all platforms where it has been shared.
Earlier this year, Microsoft provided a first look at how Loop will interact with Copilot.
The Copilot feature enables users to extract valuable information from the Loop ecosystem and generate diverse outputs using data from workspaces and pages.
With Microsoft Loop’s Copilot feature, users can easily summarize the content of Loop pages and pages within the workspace. This feature offers helpful prompts such as “create,” “brainstorm,” “describe,” or “blueprint” to assist users in getting started.
Microsoft’s Loop now includes Copilot, which can assist users in generating prompts using natural language. The main objective of Copilot is to increase productivity by providing guidance and inspiration to Loop users, helping them reach their goals faster.
Copilot, an AI assistant from Microsoft, will be directly integrated into Loop. This means that users will be able to collaborate in real-time on everything that Copilot generates. The initial testing group participants have reported that the ability to continue working with Copilot after it provides the initial text during a collaborative session is a significant benefit.
Copilot can modify tone, format, and content of a document for users. History feature allows exploration without losing work.
