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Microsoft Loop components are now finally supported in team channels. Let's find out if Loop can change how you and your colleagues collaborate in Microsoft Teams with it's latest expansion.
Creating Loop Components in Team Channels
If you're already familiar with Microsoft Loop, you shouldn't find any surprises here. In my testing, I found the same nine Loop components currently found in Teams chat are available in channels too. This includes lists, tables, Q&A, Progress Tracker, and more.
Over nine different Loop components can be created in team channels today.
Adding a component to a channel conversation (including replies) will create a new .LOOP file in the channel folder (AKA your SharePoint document library). All members of your team/group will automatically receive EDIT access, so they can contribute to the component immediately.
For those unfamiliar with Loop files, they're treated like any other file type in OneDrive and SharePoint.
New .Loop files can be accessed from SharePoint like any other file.
If you're pioneering Loop in your organization, I encourage you to teach your users that they can work on Loop files in more than just team channels. They can be opened as a page in the Microsoft Loop web app, they can be shared and collaborated on in the Outlook web app, Teams chat, and more.
Sharing Loop Components in Team Channels
When you share a Loop component to a channel, you can control whether the team has EDIT permissions or not.
Sometimes we want to share something we're working on, but we don't necessarily want to give everyone permission to edit our stuff. For example, we can copy an existing Loop component and share it to a channel with view-only permissions.
Components that aren't editable will have a banner informing team members that they can look, but not touch.
Closing Thoughts and Observations
It's always worth mentioning that my testing experience may not align 1:1 with your own experience - especially when it comes to new features being rolled out. These are just a few small things I noticed.
Observation #1: Channel meetings do not support collaborative meeting notes, but chat does.
Despite the fact that 'Collaborative Meeting Notes' are powered by Microsoft Loop, this feature isn't available for channel meetings at the time of writing. The good news is that it's expected to be released in early 2024.
In the meantime, you can still use Loop components in the chat and post responses.
Observation #2: Loop components are not available in channels for 'classic' Teams users
It was interesting to discover that Loop components weren't available in channels when I tested the 'classic' Teams app, despite sharing the same UX.
While it's possible that support will be added to the classic Teams app later, it's equally possible that it won't be. I haven't been able to find anything to confirm or deny this yet, but I will update this article once I get that answer.
Loop components likely won't be enough to make people switch to the new Teams, but it's definitely a reason for me to stay.
Learn More about Microsoft Loop
If you're new to Microsoft Loop and not sure what it's all about, check-out this guide to get started!
Thanks for reading.