Comparing Microsoft Loop vs. SharePoint for businesses – TechTarget
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, remote and hybrid workplaces have become popular. Many interactions and collaboration between team members quickly became and still remain virtual.
During the pandemic, Microsoft promoted its 365 product suite as the go-to platform for virtual interactions. The vendor also saw its customers embrace services like Teams and SharePoint for remote work and collaboration. Then, in 2021, Microsoft introduced a new app for remote work and collaboration called Microsoft Loop.
But what is Microsoft Loop, and how different is it from SharePoint for content management and collaboration?
Organizations consider SharePoint an intranet service that supports enterprise content storage and management. Features like file sharing, versioning, delivery and custom list creation have helped employees access corporate data from anywhere using a browser or a mobile app.
SharePoint offers several components to support collaboration, including the following:
Sixteen years after the birth of SharePoint, the need for real-time collaboration brought forth Teams, Microsoft’s team collaboration software. Teams incorporates video and audio conferencing, real-time chat and SharePoint to store content.
After organizations increased their adoptions of SharePoint and Teams amid the pandemic, Microsoft introduced a product called Loop in an attempt to better fit remote work and collaboration needs.
With Loop, users can interact with and update content in different Microsoft platforms, like Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneNote and Word. Those platforms then reflect the changes, as Loop maintains one version of the content, regardless of the platform.
Loop has three main features: pages, workspaces and components.
Some users may view the pages feature as similar to OneNote. However, Loop pages enable users to insert live data and components from different sources in real time, which OneNote doesn’t.
Elements within Loop pages include files, links or data from Dynamics 365 and other Microsoft 365 platforms.
Loop workspaces act like Microsoft’s content explorer. They let users store critical documents and Loop components in one place. Users can see the content they work on for specific projects, and Loop workspaces enable them to interact, share ideas and collaborate on different content asynchronously and synchronously. This feature can help organize all the items teams work on together.
Loop components can be tables, bulleted lists, checklists, paragraphs or task lists that users can edit, and the components stay up to date in connected tools, like Word, Outlook or Teams. Components’ real-time updates mean users can see the same information in the components across platforms.
Loop components are also interactive, as users can view them to see who authored the content and update them in real time.
Microsoft Loop may seem to perform the same activities as SharePoint in regard to content storage, but Loop introduces a new collaboration experience where content — regardless of its location or format — can cross into multiple Microsoft 365 apps.
The key differences between Loop and SharePoint are the following:
While it is still too early to tell how successful Loop’s adoption might be, Loop’s current components seem to give enough functionality for users to take advantage of it.
Part of: Introduction to Microsoft Loop
Microsoft plans to release Loop this year as the long-awaited information-sharing tool across 365 apps. The software reduces the time spent searching for vital data.
As most organizations now have hybrid workers, virtual collaboration is a priority. Here’s how integrating Microsoft Teams with Loop components can enable effective collaboration.
Microsoft’s announcement of Loop came with various questions — in particular, how the new product compares to legacy products, like SharePoint. Here, find out how the two differ.
While Microsoft Loop is not yet generally available, Microsoft has released details about how Loop can connect users and projects across the Microsoft 365 service.
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