One of Microsoft's oldest products, Office sits at the heart of its cloud computing strategy and is a widely used suite of tools that is starting to expand well beyond its word-processing, spreadsheet and slide-presentation roots. 'What we're trying to accomplish right now, is really delivering a new form of Office that embraces collaboration, new media (and) AI in a pretty deep way,' Belfiore said.

And Loop 'workspaces' will allow teams to work on a variety of projects at the same time using any or all of the apps across the Office suite. Later, Microsoft will unveil Loop 'pages,' which are collections of components based around an event or task that can also incorporate Office files and emails. 'So it can be in a chat or an email, or even inside of a meeting.' 'These are really our atomic units of productivity that can help you collaborate and get work done right in the flow of your work,' said Wangui McKelvey, general manager of Microsoft 365. The first elements are called 'components,' essentially small widgets that can be launched from Microsoft Teams to allow groups to collaborate on tracking the status of a project or voting on next steps. Loop will roll out in three phases over the next year or so. 'But the place where we saw an opportunity was to be focused on small-group collaboration around the part of the process where they're thinking and planning and brainstorming, where formatting doesn't really matter that much.'

'A big 'aha' for us was that a lot of teams of people use applications like Word and PowerPoint incredibly effectively, for finished products,' he said. 'One of the things you might be wondering is under what circumstances does Microsoft decide we should launch a new app?' Joe Belfiore, a longtime Microsoft executive across its gaming and devices business who is now corporate vice president for the Office Product Group, told Protocol. Loop will roll out gradually, starting as a series of actions built on Microsoft's Fluid Framework that can be used within Microsoft Teams, Outlook and other key parts of Office, but will eventually be a standalone project-management and collaboration app. The company will introduce Microsoft Loop, a new collaboration app that lives inside the broader Microsoft Office suite, later on Tuesday at Microsoft Ignite. As office workers settle into new routines driven by the displacement of the pandemic and the availability of powerful new collaboration tools, Microsoft wants to make sure workers stay in Office.

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