In this episode, I sit down with Microsoft MVP, Darrell (As A Service) Webster where we deep dive into Microsoft Loop. Microsoft Loop is free, a real time collaboration app that makes simple tasks like agendas, polling and more across Teams, Outlook, Whiteboard and easier and considerably more engaging.
From understanding the difference between a Loop element, page and the soon to be released workspaces, we demo using Loop across apps, to managing and securing Loop elements, we cover it all in this episode.
Transcript
Stephen Rose
Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode two of Petri.com’s Unplug IT. I’m your host, Stephen Rose, thank you so much for joining me today. I have seen a lot of cool things in the 14 years that I spent at Microsoft. I saw a ton of cool software and hardware, things like Groove Music and Sway. For those who remember Sway, the Zune, MMS Conference, Surface Party, Kaizala, so much more.
But you know, what’s interesting is that Microsoft has had just as many misses as they have had hits, as have most companies. But with that said, I’ve been using Loop for the past six months and I can say it is absolutely in the win column for Microsoft. It is a great tool to help you and your coworkers collaborate and work synchronously at a whole new level.
So I thought, you know, I could talk about this myself and I’m super excited, but I thought I should invite a guest. And I thought, you know, who is one of my favorite guests that I’ve had on various shows over the years? And my good friend Darrell Webster, I thought would be a perfect person to join me for this one.
He is all the way in the southern hemisphere. It is early morning Saturday for him. He has just finished his pancakes. But I appreciate you taking time out, Darryl. How are you, my friend?
Darrell Webster
Oh, great. It’s good to be here on the show. And look, it’s awesome to see this new series that you’re pulling together on UnplugIT, what a political name.
Stephen Rose
I appreciate that, thank you. So, tell us a little bit about yourself because you’re now doing new stuff and some new things for you. So, take a moment, kind of talk about some of the things you are doing and where people can find you to learn more and check out all the cool new stuff that you have going on.
Darrell Webster
Sure thing. Look, I’m a change consultant. Change management. I’ve always found an interest in turning the lights on from a people perspective, right? I’ve had experience on the IT pro perspective and you know, that’s great. I can still be dangerous and ask the right questions, but I enjoy helping people and businesses to make the most of IT and align with how they work.
So, I’ve recently branched out to independent consulting. My first client is my previous employer, so I’ve got good work and I’m looking forward to helping and partnering with other other tech businesses and clients. I’m known as « Darryl as a service » in various different places, on Twitter, you’ll find me on LinkedIn and other places too. And yeah, I just get active in the community.
I make the most of the tools, Steven, to reach out and connect with people across the planet. So I’m not shy of getting up early.
Stephen Rose
Well, I think you’re doing a pretty good job. You’re an MVP, you’ve reached out to a ton of folks. You’ve been engaged in everything from Ignite to your own podcast to being on other people’s podcast. You’ve made a great name for yourself in the industry and I’m excited to have you back doing some work with me once again as you’ve been a guest on my previous show and you even did some demo stuff at Ignite and were even part of my Ignite wrap up show a few years ago. So always great to hang out.
But we’re going to talk about Loop today and you’ve got a cool shirt on and everything. So, what do you think about Loop before we dig in to what it is and how it works. What are your thoughts on the product?
Darrell Webster
I understand the vision. I get it. To me, it’s like the product that we wanted many years ago to try and just work from wherever we are, and it doesn’t matter what tool we’re in. We can use Loop where we are, or we can use Loop as a workspace to pull people together. And I know we’re going to get into that later. What I like about it, Steven, is it’s a simple, frictionless way to start an idea, build it out and collect knowledge. There’s all sorts of scenarios. So yeah, I’m just excited to see where it’s going.
Stephen Rose
Cool. Well, let’s set the wayback machine for 2019 when Microsoft first announced Fluid Framework, that this was going to be this new free open source computer platform for real time collaboration, and it can do all this cool stuff. And then, we saw nothing about it after that. I remember Jeff Teper talking about it. « Hey, Fluid Framework is the future », and there was nothing for quite a while.
And then this popped up and I’m like, this is Fluid Framework. This is exactly what we were talking about and the goal was that you would be able to take files or and link data from other apps and chat and have them show up in real time in other places. And I thought, yes, now I get it, that this is always up to date, that it’s real time and that it drops in and Loop kind of now finally brings that to life. That’s very exciting.
I remember seeing Jeff and I’m like, I get it now, Fluid framework, Loop. And he’s like, yeah… And I’m like, it’s awesome, it’s great to see this finally come, because I remember chatting with so many people on what is this Fluid Framework thing? And people are like, I don’t know, but it sounds cool.
So, Loop kind of has three different ways that it works : There are Loop components and Loop pages and Loop workspaces. So let’s start with a Loop component. So, I’m going to turn it over to you to demo. I’ll have you do this through Teams and I’ll jump on Teams on my end and let’s show off how the Loop component looks like, and then I’ll show how this works in some other apps. So, let’s have you kick off our first demo of the day.
Darrell Webster
Sounds good. All right. Okay, Stephen. So we’re in a conversation and that’s where a lot of ideas get started because we inspire each other and we talk. And so we’ve got this chat going and sometimes we were like, okay, where do we where do we capture these ideas and take notes and thoughts? And we might try and start a OneNote or a weird document, but all of those sorts of things take time. So, Loop components are actually a good place to start because they’re really easy to add to a conversation.
Your conversation has to be blank, all right ? So it is something we add to a new response. And as we clicked this Loop messaging extinction, the rest of the world doesn’t need to know it’s called that, it’s the Loop button
Stephen Rose
It’s the the Loop icon, it’s like little zero, but it’s the Loop icon.
Darrell Webster
Exactly, yeah. We’ve got a few different choices about how we can get started quickly. Sometimes, look, you don’t want to be paralyzed by choice, so I sometimes just start off with a paragraph and then work it out from there. But it’s nice to see they’ve got these nice prompts here about what we’re about to see. So let’s go to paragraph.
Now let’s create the Loop file in the background, and we want to give it a title. So this is « Ideas with Stephen », and then I’m not going to wait any longer. I’m going to send this off because you can’t see this, Stephen, can you ?
Stephen Rose
No, I don’t see anything until you hit « send » the same way you were sharing a file with me. I’m not going to see it until you send it.
Darrell Webster.
Exactly. Before I hit send, though I do want to point out something that could be helpful when your organization wants to set sharing defaults, for example. My default sharing here is that people or anyone who has the link to this Loop can edit the Loop. And so if you wanted to change that, you can click on the button and you’ll see a very familiar box if you’ve ever shared a document in SharePoint or OneDrive before. And I’ll just leave it at that because I’m wanting to keep it open, Stephen, in case we need to loop in some other people, so we’ll leave it at that. That’s it.
Stephen Rose
Loop in some other people? I get it. That was funny.
Darrell Webster
Yeah. Well isn’t that funny that there’s a product that actually… really kind of it’s an action, but it actually kind of works. It’s a good product name. So here we are, we’ve got a paragraph and Stephen, you’re already in there. So, we could be pulling together some show notes and trying to think about how we’re going to present this ?
Stephen Rose
Yeah, that’s a great place to start. So what I did was I hit on one of my favorite tools, and actually I’ll go back to that. It’s the forward slash that as soon as you hit it, you get all of these really cool choices, even beyond what you saw like a progress tracker and all of that.
So, I hit that forward slash and I’m going to choose a voting table so that we can pick a few things that we’d like.
So we’ll say, you know, one good idea for a show could be « Loop » and you can see me typing in as I do it. Pros : Loop is cool and that’s great. Are there any cons around the Loop? Sure, yes : Only works if people in your own tenant.
Darrell Webster
Yeah.
Stephen Rose
All right, so there’s my first one. Now, what’s great is you’re seeing me type this exactly as I’m typing it. You’re going, okay, so, you know, why is this so great and why is this so good? Because we’re going to keep doing this, but what I’m going to have Darrell do here in a minute is there’s a little button up at the top that says « copy link ». And he could if I was… I’m in his own tenant right now for uh, in Teams, but not in email. But if I was, the same way that he could share a document with me internally, whatever, he could hit that copy button and he could go into Outlook and drop this exact piece in real time and everything we’re seeing here would be there inside of Outlook. And if I were to receive that email, I could click and edit, make changes and it would show up right here inside the Team chat. This could be inside of a variety of areas where we’ll see this integrated more into Word and PowerPoint and other apps as we move on.
How else have you seen people sort of using this within the Teams thing? The best way I’ve seen it done is for agendas, for Teams meetings, and it’s a great way to sort of talk about that and share that with everybody and have that in there.
Darrell Webster
Well, yes, Stephen. And that’s that’s a good flow to show very quickly that this could have been an agenda. And we’ll just, you know, maybe forward slash and use a… let’s just add a heading, so this is agenda, and double click that to be able to give it a bit of style, a bit of flair. And we can add our agenda item one and item two etc..
So Stephen, the good thing about this is that we have come up with some ideas in chat and I can copy that component and we’ll jump into an email invite and say content planning for show
Stephen Rose
And there’s that little loop button right down there at the bottom, which is great.
Darrell Webster
Yeah, that’s right. So if I was, if I was adding something from scratch, maybe I wanted to add that agenda from scratch I could add that there. But I’m going to copy and paste that component away, head there and chat. And so we’ve already done the work and I would send it off right now.
Actually, before you click send, I was going to say scroll down or actually reopen that up.
Darrell Webster
Sure.
Stephen Rose
And here’s what’s cool. Once you reopen this and if you scroll down all the way, keep going, I’m going to go to where the… Now, I’m still in Teams and I could say item four and look at that. I’m in Teams, I just typed in item four and you see that. So whenever you open up this email that you’ve gotten and you look at this invite, you are always going to see the most up to date information because it is this Loop fluid element that we’ve dropped in that I have in Teams. And now he’s copied it and linked it into an Outlook meeting, and these are always in sync.
Darrell Webster
Hmm. Where we found this really practica, Stephen, is it’s not just the agenda but we’re we’re adding notes to this. We’re putting things into a parking lot and into a table. And so it’s always attached to maybe a recurring meeting. And so it’s easy to find and people can just jump to it when they’re in the meeting or outside of the meeting. That’s always easy to to see it attached to the meeting artifact.
Stephen Rose
I love it. I think that that’s awesome. So what I’m going to do now is… let’s jump, let’s have you open up a Loop page and let’s take a look at what we just typed and what’s in there, and we can see it. So, if you want to go ahead, well, let’s open up your Loop page or I can do it.
Darrell Webster
Okay. So there’s a few ways to do that, actually, Stephen, and this is cool. Often when there’s a loop component within Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc., or rather I should say Word, Outlook, and Teams, you click on the title of the Loop and this will open up the Loop page on its own.
Stephen Rose
And the Loop page is part of a workspace, and we’ll talk about workspaces in a minute. But here is the Loop page that we were just working on, which is great. And again, I’m still here in Teams, so I can go down and I can add another item : Item five. Again, I’m still in Teams. I just hit item five and we’re seeing that showing up on my page.
So what is the difference now between a Loop element and a Loop page? And then we’ll talk about the workbook.
Darrell Webster
Mm hmm. Well, the Loop that starts in a Teams chat or an Outlook conversation is saved as a file into your OneDrive, and that feels like the right place to put it at the moment, because sometimes as you need to share it quickly with people and you don’t have to worry about finding that space. But Loop components, you do want to bring those things into the Loop page or the Loop workspace where we’re collecting our ideas and collecting our information and making it available to a whole team that we might invite into a workspace. So, we’ll find when we open up the Loop app that we can find these same Loop components and the recent Loop activity. And then we can attach it to our workspace.
Stephen Rose
All right, let me show what that looks like. So I’m going to go ahead and take over presenting and I’m going to demo that.
Okay, so here I am inside of loop.microsoft.com. We can see that up here at the top and I’m there, which is great. So, you can see that as I take a look. And then I have some different projects I’ve started here so I can go to Petri Unplugged and hey, here’s an episode outline that Darrell and I worked on for this episode where we went through and typed in different questions and things we want to talk about, but I want to get to the Loop that we were just working on.
So, I can go to reset and just like I would see inside of OneDrive, here’s a list of all the most recent things here, that’s ideas with Steven, content planning for show, and I can see here I can open that up in Outlook or in Teams. It’s in two different places. I’m going to open it up though, as the Loop page and here it is. Now, I have some shared locations, I can copy that component, I can choose to just share just the Loop component or the whole page. I can also see, and this is great, version history. All the different times when we made edits or changes to it. So I can see that there and I can restore one of those versions. This is the one place where you can do that. And I know that’s a question that a lot of folks have, and I can go down here. We already had, you know, items one through five. I can say, you know what, I would instead just like to add an emoji. So I’m going to add the microphone emoji here along with two sunglasses, and that will be my line number six.
Darrell is seeing the same thing on his. I can also go to Ideas, and this is great where I can say, Hey, what do you want to start? Do you want to start a project for a team decision or project planning or meeting notes? Any one of these so I can say, Hey, you know what? I want to do a project brief, it will automatically give me a template. I can update the cover, I can update the icons, I can go in here and see the sort of things. Also, notice where the ‘assigned to’ is. These are all apps and I can with that, that will go out to an email saying, Hey, you’ve been mentioned in a Loop chat and allow me to see exactly what that was to be able to go to it. I can drop in relevant links as I see those here at the bottom, or meeting notes or project plans or any one of these.
So these are, this is a Loop workspace, kind of like a OneNote but we’ll talk about in a minute kind of the key differences between OneNote and Loop workspaces. Anything else you want to add about Loop workspaces that I might have missed?
Darrell Webster
Oh, well, Stephen, there is one more thing that I think a lot of people are asking about their Loop content and OneDrive, and that is how do we attach it to a Loop workspace so we bring people together?
Stephen Rose
Sure, Yeah. Why don’t you go ahead and show us ?
Darrell Webster
All right. So we are in that loop workspace again, and I want to show you this really cool thing up here, ‘Recent’. And Recent is not just content that you are recently working on in your Loop workspaces in the Loop app, but it also shows content that you might have created as a Loop component. So here’s the ideas with Steven. We can see that we have created it in a Teams chat, We’ve also shared it in a meeting invite, so it appears here in Outlook. But if I open up the space, then I’ve got a place where I can see those same shared locations and I can add it to a workspace. So let’s do that. Choosing that, I can see all the different workspaces I can edit to. Let’s edit to the Petri UnplugIT, and we can click through to see where that is. And there it is. It’s a page within the list. Yeah.
Stephen Rose
So if you scroll down you should also still be able to see, as you can see, there it is, those little icons of content thrown in, it’s all up to date. So we’re basically taking this live element and we’re moving it back and forth and all over. Awesome.
All right, great stuff. So now let’s ask the tough questions, which I know everybody’s asking, which is, okay, is this going to replace OneNote or when do I use OneNote? When do I use Word and when do I use Loop? And the one thing I always say for Word is Word is great when I have something that is evergreen, meaning this is a document or something that I’m working on. It’s a proposal with a bunch of people, you want all the collaboration tools because this thing is not going to tell you who changed things and take you right to it and give you the reviewing tools that you have in Word, which is meant for a bunch of people collaborating together on a document or a white paper or something that is going to go out and represent. These are elements that you’re dropping into something which are timely, but not something that you’re going to probably need to refer back to ten years from now.
So that’s sort of Loop versus Word and why you would want to write a proposal or a group thing in Word and not in Loop. Now, you can still see real time as people are working in it, but as the author, you have a lot more control and can remove all those comments and edit and manage. But what about Loop versus OneNote? What are your thoughts there, Darrell ?
Darrell Webster
It has been quite a common comparison, and even as we talk about Loop workspaces, we’d be talking about that OneNote construct of pages and sections, right? I think Loop is helping in the the note taking space for sure and that we can easily start and share content using the Loop components, and then on share things from that. And then we’ve got components that allow us to do a whole lot more inside of Loop.
But OneNote still fills a great space in terms of using digital ink, and also it is already part of a Microsoft team or a SharePoint team site. If you are a diehard OneNote user, then you might be also using some of the errands to expand on some of your capabilities. So, we don’t see that in the Loop yet, but I definitely see some crossover. Yeah…
Stephen Rose
Yeah. But the other nice thing about OneNote is I can share it with anybody. Anybody. I can take a page, you don’t have to be part of my domain. I can say, here it is, we’re going to work on this together or send it just as a read only and have them added in. So it’s a great way to create sort of an evergreen to do or an evergreen… Here’s a step by step, you know, list on how to do this, where it’s more I want to share this out and have other people add, but it does not need to be in real time.
The other thing is with that you’re not relying on, you know, the OneNote change engine and all those permissions and things that you might run into which could make sharing a Loop document or a Loop element a little bit different.
Now, you can use Loop in Outlook and Teams, you can use it now in Word for web and in Whiteboard. What do you think about it coming to more places? You know, do we see this popping up in Excel or PowerPoint or things along that line? Where else with this functionality make sense as we move forward?
Darrell Webster
I think it actually does make sense. And I’ve had this conversation with people. Word is a solid, rich tool in terms of developing documents. Why would I start a Loop component in Word? But I would say that like with seeing this experience today, our ideas might start in a conversation. They might be planned out in a Loop workspace in terms of coordinating work and assigning tasks and coming up with briefs and outlines and references and all sorts of links like that.
We can then take that Loop component and embed it on the front page of the document while we’re working on that. So imagine that Stephen being a place where we can use that to coordinate our work on the document and then also bring it back into our meetings.
Whiteboard certainly comes into… I guess it fills that gap where Loop doesn’t have inking or notation or spatial kind of Sticky Notes and the like, so the two go really well together in terms of the ideation process, I like being able to to use a Loop embedded in a page and then have the idea stuff around it. And I’m also excited to see what’s coming in terms of Copilot and the summarizing space and how it works with Loop as well.
Stephen Rose
So, if you had to pick two or three things that you are now able to do better because of Loop, what is that takeaway? Because that’s the big one for the audiences. Okay, when should I look to drop in a Loop? And what’s interesting is most people don’t even realize they have Loop. I can tell you, I mean, some times I’ve been to a conference and had people in education or government, and I’m like, okay, go down to that little icon down there and I’ll click it, I’ll click with somebody else, and then they’ll come back to me the next day and go, « Oh my God, that’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. This is awesome. It’s going to change how I work. » And for some people they look at it and go, « That’s cool, but how do I use it? »
So, what is your advice to folks on three things that they will immediately be able to do better or see benefit from in using an aspect of Loop pages, Loop components, Loop workspaces and Loop, which will come to mobile. We’ll talk about mobile app in a few minutes, but what are your thoughts there?
Darrell Webster
I think that aligning that with some of the common scenarios that we work anyway, I like saying Loop being used in a chat and then taken into a meeting. Like I said, a lot of these ideas that you come up with are in those conversations spaces where we’re talking, we’re trying to capture ideas. Someone sees something great and they go, « you better note that down », and so being able to just drop that and… yeah, just drop that in there and build on it. And what I also like saying to is, is Loop being taken into different places. So if we bring it into that workspace, great, we can work on it. We can build out and collect knowledge together on a page and maybe create some more pages related to that. Create a page dedicated to one of the tasks to actually action that idea. But being able to also share just a piece of that Loop too, to loop someone in to maybe work on only the paragraph or only the table. I quite like that segmenting. I’ve been able to loop people in to contribute.
Stephen Rose
Cool. All right, let’s talk a little bit about security, this is an IT pro show. Now, Loop components, as we said, are stored inside of OneDrive. You can go to OneDrive and you can see all the Loop components that you’ve created there, and you can also click on it there and see all the versioning, which is great.
First off, Loop components are available to everyone in your organization who has the link. It’s not possible to make them available to only certain people or to certain people outside of your organization. So that’s the thing to be aware of, is that there are some limitations in in managing Loop components. Why is that? What are your thoughts around that, Daryl? I mean, I get, you know, why not allow it like a OneDrive file to be sent out? Is it just that we’re not in the maturity of the product yet, or do you think that there’s an underlying control or safety that makes more sense around that?
Darrell Webster
I think it is about maturity of the product. And while we did have that massive gap between buzz video in 2019, yeah, it was 2019, and the launch of the Loop app and components, it is still something that they want to get right. And I think it also depends on having that Loop capability enabled on your external guest side. So we know that it’s set up for success, that eventually when external sharing is supported for Loops, whether it be from your OneDrive or eventually from Teams, that this will be possible. But they are taking it cautiously. And now, as other organizations are also deciding whether or not to turn it on, that’s going to be the thing that makes it possible for them to participate in using Loop.
Stephen Rose
Okay. From a security standpoint second, Loop components do not support sensitivity labels from emails or meetings. So that’s the first thing to be aware of. DLP, data loss prevention does support Loop components, but DLP support is coming soon and I haven’t heard anything more on that. I hear at some point this year it will come, which is great. But Loop components are discoverable using e-discovery and purview. So for legal purposes you can find those, you can save the loop as an HTML archive so it can be viewed. You know it is live, so you know, they can’t be right offline for that, so that’s what it can do. Loops open up in a browser without being able to edit the content or damage the evidence, if that’s what the case is.
So, those are a few things from a security standpoint to keep in mind. Now, what does it mean if I don’t see Loop in Teams? What does that mean? Well, the first one is obviously you may not have OneDrive, so you got to have OneDrive going. Can you, you know, can use Loops with Box or Dropbox or any of the other tools, or is it OneDrive specific?
Darrell Webster
It’s OneDrive specific. It is the fluid technology built into the SharePoint infrastructure. Maybe one day third-party products all support fluid as a framework, who knows?
Stephen Rose
Yeah. You see, I have to ask, has your company turned on internal sharing and Loop only works in HTML emails ? It does not work in plain emails and the company can turn off Loop. What else could be some of the things that are not happening? Because I know I got a business license. I turned on Teams and I didn’t see loop and I’m like, hmm, I have OneDrive, I have Loop… What would you say to somebody before I give you the answer and what I realized the issue was. What are some of the other things that you need to make sure of to make sure that Loop pops up in your tenant?
Darrell Webster
Right. Well, there are some things that you want to do to enable loop, and think of it as two experiences, Loop components and the Loop app. And there are some policies that you need to turn on. There’s a couple of PowerShell commands that you need to run to make it available as well. And I think this is at the moment Steve… Loop components were a default on experience to begin with and the option was given to organizations to turn it off if they wanted to.
Stephen Rose
Right
Darrell Webster
Whereas the Loop app experience was the opposite because Microsoft recognized that the compliance side of things are still being built. They didn’t want to create a big problem, so they gave a method for organizations to turn it on, share it with a limited group of people using the Office config policies and allow a few people to to use it that way.
So there are a few steps that’s well documented. And while some people might complain « Oh, I just want it turned on, do I have to have my admin involved? » It’s good to see Microsoft being responsible as they try to get the admin story built out before they make it widely available.
Stephen Rose
Now, I agree they can. You can go to Loop… Sorry, learn.microsoft.com, and then when you’re there search « manage loop components »; and it will go through all the settings for management in Outlook and Word and all the rest. And it will go through a few other things if Loop is there but not working for you. Loop is maybe in a view mode rather than reviewing or editing mode, and Loop does not work in Safari, so that’s something important.
It does work in Chrome and it does work in Edge, but it does not work in Safari. It is now working on Teams in Mac, though. That was one thing that a few months ago was not working, as you know, you demoed. And like you said, Loop components may have been turned off by an organization, so you may have to check with the admin or, you know, on why that is. What else have you seen on reasons why Loop may not be working for someone?
Darrell Webster
Or not working as expected? One common problem I’ve seen, and it relates to your external sharing policies choices that you’ve made. Some organizations set defaults to coach people towards good behavior in terms of making a deliberate choice about how they share their content. And you’ll be infinitely aware, Stephen, from your OneDrive background. But being able to set the defaults so that it is a good practice would be to show or share to specific people that should be default. You go to share a document, there it is. It guides you through that process.
But that’s not great for Loop because Loop is about trying to share with people and loop people in, and so one thing that I guess it’s not a consistent experience, but what we saw earlier with adding a Loop to a Teams chat, we get that option to choose the permissions.
Now, we do have the same option in Outlook when adding a Loop to Outlook, but it’s not the same user interface now. And if you haven’t chosen appropriate defaults, like if you would set your default as to share a file from your OneDrive with view-only permissions, then Outlook sometimes sends out a Loop attached and people can’t do anything with it.
You’ve got to know where to change that permission right?
Stephen Rose
Right. Good points. All good stuff. So, I mean, the takeaway here is we would love for you to try a Loop. We would love for you to turn it on. You’re going to find it in certain groups. This could be a game changing application and how people collaborate, how people work together on these small things but that are important. From « Hey, we’re going to do a BYO lunch thing, so what does everybody want to bring? Throw something in here and we’re all seeing it. »
And the great thing is, and I’ve seen folks do this where they put in what stock is and they’ll drop it in as a Loop component. And that way, when you open up email, every time that email calls home, you’re getting the most updated version of that rather than having to go through a large spreadsheet for small amounts of things.
So there can be times when having that live component across multiple… inside of a web Word, inside of a Whiteboard, inside of Outlook, inside of Teams, inside of a Team chat to make a world of difference in how you work together and how you collaborate. So I’m a big fan. Give us some final thoughts on Loop and what you would say to IT administrators on using Loop and turning it on within their environment and encouraging people to use it.
Darrell Webster
I do encourage a gradual or cautious pilot if you do need to take some small steps to begin with. But as a change manager, I like to see pilots, including real people, and not just the IT people.
Stephen Rose
Right.
Darrell Webster
Sorry, you are real people. What I mean is business people, business users, it’s important because you’re going to get…
Stephen Rose
Let’s just refer to them as ordinary end users, not special admin users. We’ll do it that way.
Darrell Webster
Yeah, we’re end users too.
Stephen Rose
Yes, exactly.
Darrell Webster
Include them in your pilots because you’re going to get a whole other different perspective that you might you might have glossed over. And they’re going to show you and talk about scenarios where they might want to use it or things that you might find simple that they might not find so intuitive. And that’s going to help to discover even scenarios within your business that people can relate to, and that’ll help you with your rollout and maybe even just simple adoption thinking in terms of, you know, sharing that around.
Stephen Rose
I love that. And chances are you already have these icons and didn’t even realize it and haven’t been using them. So, try it out, test it out, see how you like it.
Awesome. Darrell, do you have any additional information on Loop that you would like to share with folks from your own? You know, videos, things like that. What would you tell people to take a look
Darrell Webster
If you go to my website, modernworkmentor.com, early on I thought, look, rather than writing a whole lot of blog posts and creating a bunch of videos on YouTube and just sort of them sitting out there, why not pull it together in a course and make it something that people can follow so that we can learn together? So, there is a reference there on my website to learning Microsoft Loop. We’ve also got a LinkedIn-based user group, so you’ll find the Microsoft Loop User group, which you can join. And we have sessions that we’re learning together about how to use Loop as a as it rolls out.
Stephen Rose
Okay. I want to thank my special guest, Darrell Webster. Darrell, awesome to have you. Thanks so much for joining. So, lots of cool stuff coming up, I want to thank everybody for joining me here on UnplugIT. I’m your host, Stephen Rose. We will see you very, very soon. Say goodbye, Darrell !
Darrell Webster
See you, bye now.
Stephen Rose
Bye everybody.