Microsoft launches Loop to help users collaborate on documents

Image for representational purpose only. Photo: AFP

Tech giant Microsoft has launched its own version of Google Wave -- Microsoft Loop, a new Office collaboration app.

According to TechCrunch, Loop is a new app -- and concept -- that takes the Fluid framework, which provides developers with flexible components to mix and match in order to create real-time editing-based applications, to create a new experience for users to collaborate on documents.

In many ways, that was also the promise of Google Wave -- real-time collaboration plus a developer framework and protocol to bring Wave everywhere, the report said.

Google Wave was a doomed real-time messaging and collaboration platform Google launched in 2009 and prematurely shuttered in 2010.

There are three elements to Loop -- Loop components, "atomic units of productivity" like lists, tables, notes and tasks; Loop pages, "flexible canvases where you can organise your components and pull in other useful elements like files, links, or data to help teams think, connect, and collaborate;" and Loop workspaces, shared spaces where you somehow can catch up on what everybody is working on and track progress toward shared goals.

One thing Wave never had that is apparently a core feature of Loop is that Loop tracks your cursor position in real time, the report said.

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