The new Microsoft Loop app is available starting today and we’re going to take a first look at it. We’re going to start with what Loop is and why should you care? Then we’ll look at how you can get it right now and then we’ll finish off with how you can use it. Let’s just say that by the end of this video, you will be completely in the loop. First off, what even is the Loop app? Loop is a collaborative space where you can manage and stay on top of projects. It’s really perfect for things like task lists or meeting notes or brainstorming sessions. And those are just a few examples, and we’ll look at a lot more. Now you might be thinking, great, this is yet another tool that I have to learn how to use. But it turns out that this is actually one of its strengths. Let’s say that in the Loop app, you insert a voting table. Maybe you want to find out what is everyone’s favorite marketing idea. You can have people come into your Loop workspace and they could vote on their favorite idea. Or you could also email that table out and people can vote within the email and whatever their vote is will be in sync and will also show up in the Loop app. So, it doesn’t so much matter what tool you happen to be using because all of the content stays in sync across all of these different tools. That’s pretty cool. Let’s start with how you can even get the Loop app. To get Loop, head to the following website. You could click on the card up above in the top right-hand corner or the link down below in the description. Once you land on this homepage, there’s a very prominent button right in the center that says, get Looped in. See, it’s not just me making Loop jokes. The team does it too. Once you click on that, you’ll have to sign in and then you can get the app. Now, if it turns out that your organization doesn’t yet support Loop, you can ask your IT admin to turn it on. I’ve included a link with instructions down below in the description. You could pass that onto your IT admin, and of course, it also doesn’t hurt if you send along a box of Kevin Cookie Company cookies. That’s a guaranteed way to get it on. When you finish signing into the Loop app, you land on the start page, and right down here, we can see all of your different workspaces. So, what is a workspace? A workspace is just a way of organizing a team or a project. So, here’s an example. You see the finance team and right down here, we see project cookie monster, just as two examples. To jump into one of these workspaces, you could simply click on it. Here, when I hover over, you see this ellipsis in the top right-hand corner or the three dots. When I click on this, here you can favorite one of these workspaces. So especially if you have a lot of different workspaces, you can simply click on favorites right here and get back a little faster. Here, you could also rename and style. So, you could change this name. You could change this image, or you could add additional members to this workspace. Now I have work to get done and I want to create a new workspace. Here in the top right-hand corner, I’ll click on this plus icon. This now drops me on a screen where I can create a new workspace. Right up on top, I can update the cover associated with this workspace. When I click on this, I have all these different nice options that I can choose from. And let’s go with this, maybe this blue example right here. I think that looks nice. I’ll click on select. Right down here, I can type in a name for this workspace, and this will be for the marketing team at the Kevin Cookie Company. So, I’ll enter in marketing team. Right over here, I can also assign an emoji to this workspace. And the only appropriate emoji that I could think of is a cookie. So here I’ll select this. This looks great now. I’ll click on create. This now drops us into a blank new workspace and we’re going to add some amazing marketing plans here. But before we do that, I do want to orient you to the experience that we see here. Over on the left-hand side, this is referred to as the sidebar, and this is what we use to navigate throughout Loop and also all of my different workspaces. For example, if I want to go back to the start page, here in the top left-hand corner, I can click on the Loop logo, and this brings me right back to where we just were. And right down here in the bottom right-hand corner, we can now see that there’s a new workspace for the marketing team. Here, I’ll click on that to return back into this workspace. Instead of going back to the start page, over on the left-hand side within the sidebar, I can also use this dropdown menu to also navigate throughout all of my different workspaces. So just another way to get around, but enough talk about navigating throughout the workspaces. I actually need to get some work done. So right up here, let’s minimize the sidebar by clicking on this icon. I want to use this blank new page to help prioritize our marketing budget here at the Kevin Cookie Company. We have a lot of money to spend. Right down here it currently says untitled page. Here I’ll simply type in prioritize marketing budget. Right up above, I can also customize the look and feel or the style of this page. Here I can add an icon and we’re talking about budget. So, let’s see if they have any emojis with money. I think this one looks good. Over here, I can also add a cover image and here I have all these different options. Let’s go with this one and then click on select. Right up here, I see text that says, just start typing, and I want to give the team some direction. So here I’ll type in let’s land on how to invest our Kevin Cookie Company marketing budget, and then I’ll hit enter. And here it says just start typing, but I see some hints down here. It says I could use a forward slash to insert or an @ to find. Now let’s try the forward slash to see what comes up. When I type in a forward slash, this allows me to insert different components into this page. Here I have some basic things like inserting a heading. Here I could insert a table, a checklist, a bulleted list. And I even have some different templates that I could insert. I could insert a task list, a voting table, a progress tracker. And as I go down, there are also ways to communicate. Let’s say I want to @ mention someone. So, there are all sorts of different options that I have here. Now I want to brainstorm different marketing or growth hacking ideas, and I also want the team to vote on them. So, I think of voting table sounds promising. I’ll select this one and look at that. It inserts a voting table into my page. This is not just an ordinary table. It has some remarkable capabilities, but before we explore those, let me first type in some ideas and the associated pros and also cons. Now that I filled in this table with all of these different marketing ideas, and personally, I think they’re all really great, but I do have a personal preference. I think making YouTube tutorial videos with references to cookies throughout is probably the best idea. So over here, I’ll vote for this one. You’d be really surprised at how much we rev up our sales anytime we post a new video. When I hover over the top of the table, I can also add new additional columns. Right here, I’ll click on this plus icon. And I think it probably also makes sense to talk about the cost associated with this idea. So here I’ll title this column cost. And when I click on this dropdown, over here I can change the column type. By default, it’s set to text, but over here, I want to change it to a number. And I think this one’s really expensive because we have to research a new recipe for a hamburger with cookies. So probably about 50,000. The videos were pretty cheap. It’s probably about 50. And using pigeons, that sounds really expensive. So, I’ll enter a hundred thousand. Now these tables have some pretty phenomenal capabilities. Down here, you see that it automatically just summed up this column. Over here, when I click on this dropdown, I see other metrics that I can insert. When I come up above, here I can click on this dropdown and maybe I want to sort in descending order. There I could change the order. So, it’s almost like having an Excel table directly in your page. You have lots of power here. Looking at this table, I think it would probably make more sense to put the cost after the pros and cons. Luckily, it’s very easy to adjust where columns appear. Here, I could simply click up on here and I could drag this column to a new position. I’ll place it right there. And just like I could adjust things within a table, I could also adjust components on the page. Here I have my voting table component and here I also have my text component. Here I could simply drag on this and maybe I’ll drag it to the bottom of the page, so it appears under the voting table. So, it’s very easy to move things around on the page. This page is really coming together nicely, but I do want to add some additional pages to this workspace. In the top left-hand corner, I’ll click on this icon to show the sidebar again. And right down here, I have the option to add more pages. Currently, I just have this one page to prioritize the marketing budget. When I click on this, here I could add an entirely new page or I could also add a link. Let’s say I want to link to a website, and coming soon, you’ll also be able to simply drag and drop in different Office file content types. So, let’s say you want to drag in a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint presentation. You can add all of those to your workspace. For now, I just want to add a new page. So, I’ll click on this right up here. This has now inserted a new page and I want to use this to keep track of meeting notes. If I look down at the bottom of the page, here I have all of these different templates that I can start from. And in fact, I can click on explore other templates and here I get a comprehensive view of all of the different templates that are available within Loop. So, it makes it really easy to get started. Now, right over here on the left-hand side, I see a category for meeting notes. And this has a really nice structure. I think this will really help organize our meetings. Right down here, I’ll click on use this template. And here it’s automatically updated my page to use this template. Wow. My teammates are going to think I put so much time into preparing this page. Of course, for my teammates to think that I need to share this workspace with them. In the top right-hand corner, let’s click on the share button. And right here, I have a few different options. Here, I can share the entire workspace. So, they’ll get access to all the pages within the marketing team. Here, I could also just share an individual page link. Maybe I just want them to have access to the meeting notes. And down below, you can also share just a Loop component. So, say just that voting table. For now, I just want to invite someone to the workspace. I’ll select this option. This now opens up a prompt and I can now type in names of people who I want to collaborate with. Once I’m all done, I’ll click on invite. And right down below, I can see that I successfully invited all of these people to this workspace. Here, I’ll close this out. Now that I’ve invited some people to this workspace, let’s go back to the marketing budget to see if anyone’s voting for any of these ideas. I’ll simply click here. And here’s that voting table, but it’s a little hard to see who’s voting for what. So right up here, I’ll click on this icon and here I can hide various columns. Let me hide the cost for now. And over here, I can see all of the votes. And let’s see. Oh, look, look at that. It looks like a vote just came in. And here, if I hover over it, it looks like Mike voted for sell a hamburger with cookies as the bun to generate viral buzz. That one sounds yucky to me, but I do see some potential there. Down at the very bottom, I can also see that Mike has his active cursor right here at the end of the sentence. So, let’s see if he types something in. Oh, look at that. He says, you don’t get to keep your budget at the end of the quarter, so let’s spend it all, no matter how ill advised. That is great advice. Here, when I hover over this text, you’ll see this collaboration icon. And when I click on this, I can react to what Mike added here. And I think it’s a great idea. So here I’ll add the heart. That way he knows that I am supportive of what he said. If we go back to the collaboration icon, here I can also add a comment. Here, I’ll click on this and let’s say I have my spending pants on. And here I’ll send that message through. So, what’s really nice in Loop is you can react and also comment on any single component on the page. So, whether that’s a voting table or whether it’s a block of text. I know Mike is really passionate about this hamburger idea. So, I think it’s most appropriate if he owns it moving forward. Right up here, I’ll click on this plus icon again. And here I’ll click on this dropdown, and I’ll change the column type to a person. And let me call this column owner. I think Mike should own this item. Here I see him in the list. I’ll select Mike and this is now assigned him as the owner of this task. What’s really nice in Loop is when you assign a task, this will also show up in the user’s Planner and also in their To Do app. So that way they can stay on top of all of their different tasks. Also, when I look at the bottom of this column, here I can see that Mike currently has one item. So, you get these nice aggregate metrics at the bottom of columns. Unfortunately, only Mike and I have voted so far, and ideally, I would like the rest of the marketing team to weigh in, but most people work in email. So, I want to share this table so people can fill it out in email and then it’ll automatically update or sync directly here in Loop. To do that, here I’ll click into the table and over on the left-hand side, you’ll see this waffle icon. When I right click on that, there’s the option to create a Loop component. Let’s click on that. This has now turned this table into a component. So, what can I do with that? Well, here, when I hover over the table or the component, in the top right-hand corner, I see this icon that lets me copy the component. I’ll click on this. And right here, I can see that the component is now copied. I’ll close this out and then head to my email. Here I am now in my email and here in the body of the email message, I can simply paste in that component, and here you see this table. The really neat thing is this is live. So here, if anyone comes in and makes any changes to this table, or maybe they come in and they submit their vote, these changes will also flow through to the Loop app. Here, I’ll send this out and let’s see if we get more responses. Here, I now have my email opened up side-by-side with a Loop app. And look at this, if I submit a vote in the email message, here, it automatically reflects in the Loop app. Or let’s say that I add some additional text in the email. Here, that also shows up directly in the Loop app. So, the information stays in sync regardless of where it happens to be. This is Outlook and this is the app. It also works in Microsoft Teams, in Word, in Whiteboard, and it’s coming soon to Excel and PowerPoint. I really hope more people come in now and vote for their favorite idea. That way we could land on where we should apply our budget. To confirm who has access, here, I can hover over the component. And in the top right-hand corner, I can click on this icon to see who all has access. And it looks like it’s the marketing team, so that’s perfect. Now, if someone comes in and let’s say they changed some of these ideas, I wouldn’t want to lose these fantastic ideas. If I need to jump back to a previous version for whatever reason, in the top right-hand corner, I can click on the three dots and here I can access version history, so this way I can jump back to many different points in time. I think this marketing budget, this is coming together nicely. I think by the end of the day, we’ll have a solid idea, but I do have some other work I need to get done. Over on the left-hand side, I can click on this notification bell and here I can see if I’ve been @ mentioned anywhere else. And here it looks like Darrel asked me something. So, I should probably follow up on that shortly. But before I do that, I have an idea that I don’t want to forget. Right here, there is a section for ideas, and I’ll click on this plus icon. Here, I’ll paste in cookies sales due to YouTube videos. I definitely want to flesh this out as a way to justify getting more funding for these YouTube videos. Now, this page that I am creating here, this is private just to me. So here I could put down all of my thoughts. Once I’m ready to share with a broader group, up here in the top right-hand corner, I can click on this icon and then I can add it to a workspace. All right, well, hopefully you were able to get Loop and hopefully you’re now in the Loop and I feel like I’m speaking in a Loop. Anyway, let me know down below in the comments, will this new tool change any of your existing workflows? To watch more videos like this one, please consider subscribing and I’ll see you in the next video.