Microsoft launches Loop, its promising answer to Notion: how to test the app and what features it offers

The way we work and organize ourselves has changed over time. In the increasingly digitized (and fast-paced) world in which we live, we have the need to deal with dynamic work environments. For example, collaborating in real time with a project team that is physically dispersed, but connected to the Internet.

Notion has been one of the first companies to respond to this need with a true Swiss army knife of productivity. And such has been its success that it has penetrated deep into organizations of the level of IBM, Pixar or McDonalds. Microsoft has not wanted to be left behind. Office developers have been working on their own proposal called the Microsoft Loop.

We can now try Loop, Microsoft’s Notion

We’ve had to wait quite some time before we can start testing the equivalent of Microsoft’s Notion. Although those from Redmond presented their tool in 2021, it was not until this week that they finally enabled access to a trial version. We are not before the final application, but as we will see later we can already test it.

If you’ve never heard of Loop before, you might be wondering what this app has to offer. First of all, we must mention that the essence of Loop is very different from what we know from the Office suite of a lifetime and from applications that are part of it, such as OneNote. We are facing a proposal with a futuristic tint that is useful for many, many things.

In Loop we find three pillars: components, pages and work environments. When we talk about components we refer to elements such as a block of text, a table, or a task list. Pages, for their part, are the result of one or more components, and work environments are shared areas of components or pages.

In this way we can create projects according to our needs, even using templates, and invite people to collaborate. Changes are applied in real time. We can be editing a column of a table and our teammates (up to a maximum of 50) are in charge of editing other components of the environment.

Those of Redmond, who have embraced artificial intelligence taking it to Bing, also will feed Loop with AI. This application will have the new Microsoft 365 Copilot, that is, we will have a kind of ChatGPT that will help us brainstorm, write essays, receive suggestions and more.

How to get started with Microsoft Loop

The initial trial version of Microsoft Loop is now available to all users. You just have to enter loop.microsoft.comsign in with your Microsoft account and start testing it.

There are also apps for iOS and Android. In the case of the latter, it has not yet reached Google Play. The iPhone apphowever, it is available through Test Flight for Microsoft work or school accounts. If you meet the requirements you can enter aka.ms/LoopiOS to download it.

Images: Microsoft

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