After Ignite: Features Coming to Microsoft Loop (Besides Copilot)

Now that the dust has settled from Microsoft’s Ignite 2023 conference, I wanted to take a moment to take a closer look at a couple of announcements around Microsoft Loop that really caught my attention.

While AI was the HOT topic of this year (sorry Metaverse), organizations that don’t meet Microsoft's Copilot requirements won’t get to try it out for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, there was a handful of golden nuggets announced for Loop that won’t require Copilot to use.

Below is my list of top non-Copilot announcements for Microsoft Loop at Ignite 2023.

NOTE: If you’re not familiar with Loop, I suggest starting here to get caught up.

Microsoft Loop is Now Generally Available on Web and Mobile

Not only is Microsoft Loop widely available as a web app, the development team also announced the release of their new mobile app that can be downloaded today.

Global admins may still need to enable Loop within their tenant so users can leverage workspaces.  Check out this article to learn more.

New Loop Components

The newest components are the ‘Table of Contents’ and ‘Code Block’. If you’re like me and have made the transition to doing the bulk of your writing in Microsoft Loop, having a table of contents in a long document is a nice-to-have.

If you’re a programmer, the ‘Code Block’ component supports over 10 different languages including Java, Python, CSS, HTML, PowerShell and more. If you have a team of developers that need some help collaborating, this component should prove valuable.

Both the ‘Code Block’ and ‘Table of Contents’ components are available today.

Speaking of developers, this is a good time to mention that Azure DevOps also has a Loop component:

There are more first-party integrations coming to Loop too, such as Microsoft Whiteboard getting its own Loop component in early 2024. This will allow you to add boards to your loop pages, and then share them across Teams, Outlook, Word on the web and OneNote on the web.

The addition that I’m most excited about is the Planner component, which is now available in Microsoft Loop as well. By simply pasting your plan’s URL onto a page in Loop, it will automatically embed the board.

In my own testing, it works like a charm. Adding a Planner board was really fast and easy:

I did run into a few limitations of the Planner component.  For example, I was not able to get the component to render on a page outside of the Loop app.  Copying and pasting the component into Teams and Outlook would only show a URL on the page where the component should be.

External Sharing Coming to Loop in 2024

Now, I’ve been piloting Microsoft Loop since it was still called the “Fluid Framework” back in 2019, which... feels longer ago than it really is.

Something I’ve been looking forward to since those early days is the ability to share and collaborate in Loop with external users. This functionality has now been formally announced and is expected to be available for preview in early 2024.

This functionality could very well change how we collaborate on B2B programs in the future. Needless to say, I’ll be testing this expensively and will report back after I’ve gotten my hands on it.

Honorable Mentions

Microsoft might have mentioned a thing or two about Copilot integration in Loop now too. This is a topic we'll discuss after we are able to get our hands on it. For now, check out their blog post to learn more.

Learn More about Microsoft Loop

• Microsoft Loop Ignite 2023 blog post
• Microsoft Loop Adoption Resources
• Microsoft Ignite 2023 Book of News