Loop Components: What are they?

Loop Components are one of the 3 elements (Loop components, Loop pages, and Loop workspaces) that are part of Microsoft Loop which was announced at Ignite. Loop Components are the first of these elements to be released in public preview and are currently only available if you are using a desktop or mobile client and only within Teams chat. There is no timeline on making Loop components in Teams channels yet, but it will be coming.

The components that are available initially are bulleted list, checklist, numbered lists, paragraph, table, and task list. App developers and Microsoft will be able to add components as time goes on.

To send a Loop component from within a chat, click on the Loop component icon and select the component from the list.  

Like co-authoring in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel, people can co-author in real time on Loop components.

To create nested Loop components, type a / and it will bring up the menu to add another component.

In this example we have a paragraph component and a table component.

To add a comment with your name within a Loop component type “//[spacebar]”

To make sure the Loop component stays easily accessible you can pin the component in the chat making it easier to find. Click on the three dots that appear when you hover over the top right corner of the message and select Pin.

Here you can see the Agenda.fluid message is pinned to the top and clicking on it will take me directly to that message.

Some ideas on use cases:

Meetings: Add an agenda and then use a task list to assign actions that need to be completed from a meeting. Everyone in the meeting chat will see who is accountable for each action and a due date.

Email Draft: Use a paragraph to co-author an email with co-workers before sending.

Brainstorm session: Using a bulleted or numbered list to keep track of ideas in a meeting or chat that will be always kept up to date and can be revisited and revised in real time.