Use Loop Workspaces to Organize Recurring Meeting Notes and Documents

Microsoft is keen to demonstrate the value of integration across the Microsoft 365 suite. They also take every opportunity to hype new products to drive usage and adoption. Both elements are present in message center notification MC792605 (13 May 2024), which tells us that organizers of recurring Teams meetings will be prompted to create a Loop workspace to hold the information used by the meeting. The prompt is in the meeting chat (Figure 1).

The idea is that the Loop workspace serves as a durable container for content worked on over a series of meetings. If the meeting organizer chooses to create the workspace, the meeting participants receive invitations to join the workspace and the organizer can add files shared in the meeting, As meetings in the series progress, Teams will automatically add files, whiteboards, loop components, and so on that are shared in the meeting chat to the workspace.

Deployment Timeline

Deployment to targeted release tenants is ongoing now. General availability is due soon thereafter. Initially, the feature is limited to recurring meetings with between three and 50 participants. Microsoft says that they will increase the limit for meeting participants in the future and add support for modern groups (Microsoft 365 groups). I’m not quite sure what that last statement means, unless it’s saying that Loop will support sharing with the membership of a Microsoft 365 group.

Loop Licensing Could be an Issue

On the surface, using a Loop workspace to manage the files shared by participants of a recurring meeting sounds like an excellent idea. However, there are two issues that need consideration.

First, Microsoft doesn’t restrict the creation of Loop workspaces through licensing today, but they will restrict creation to accounts holding Microsoft 365 licenses after July 1, 2024. Users who share Loop workspaces can still access workspace content after that date, but they cannot create new workspaces or add or remove users to workspaces. This limits the usefulness of the feature to meeting organizers with the required licenses.

The Loop workspaces report PowerShell script described in this article includes details of licenses assigned to workspace owners. You can use the report to figure out if some licensing adjustments are necessary. While you’re considering the licenses assigned to Loop workspace owners, consider reviewing the full set of licenses (and their costs) assigned to users across the tenant using the Microsoft 365 tenant licensing report script.

Waiting for Guest Support Through Loop External Access

The second issue is that many Teams meetings involve guest users. I participate in recurring meetings in three other Microsoft 365 tenants, but until Loop supports external access to workspaces, guest accounts cannot access the information stored in workspaces created to support recurring meetings. Microsoft has promised that external access for Loop is coming, but there’s no sign that the initial support announced in MC736437 (for tenants without sensitivity labels) due to arrive in April is available yet. Some recent tweets from Microsoft imply that external access is about to arrive, but we’ll have to wait for it.

Tenants that use sensitivity labels won’t get support for external access to Loop workspaces until later. The tenants I participate in as a guest all use sensitivity labels, so I guess that I’ll just have to wait a little longer before those meetings can embrace Loop instead of standard OneDrive file sharing.

A Good Idea for Some

You might think that I believe using a Loop workspace to hold information for recurring meetings is not a useful feature. That’s not true. It’s a good feature if you have the necessary licenses and don’t need to share anything with guests (until that feature is released). Sometimes I think Microsoft operates on the basis that everyone has high-end licenses and only ever collaborates within a tenant. That isn’t the way the real world works, and that’s why I am slightly negative about this feature.

On another note, this kind of integration between Microsoft 365 products is the kind of thing that regulators like the European Union worry about because they create a barrier for competition by preventing the ability to use features if a customer chooses to use a different technology (such as replacing Teams with Slack). Innovation can sometimes be a double-edged sword.

So much change, all the time. It’s a challenge to stay abreast of all the updates Microsoft makes across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Subscribe to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook to receive monthly insights into what happens, why it happens, and what new features and capabilities mean for your tenant.

Report More than 200 Loop Workspaces Requires Fetching Pages of Data

In November 2023, I wrote about a PowerShell script I developed to report the storage consumed by Loop workspaces. The script worked. That is, it worked until a tenant had more than 200 workspaces at which point the script ceased to report details for any more workspaces. This point was recently made to me by a reader after they discovered that the script didn’t produce the desired results in their tenant. Obviously, I didn’t do enough testing to encounter the limit.

Investigation (reading the documentation for the Get-SPOContainer cmdlet) revealed that the cmdlet implements a primitive form of pagination. The default mode is to fetch the first 200 workspaces, but if you know that more workspaces exist, you can add the Paged parameter to the cmdlet.

Odd Pagination to Fetch More Loop Workspaces

APIs implement pagination when they want to limit the amount of data that an app can fetch in one operation. The Graph APIs use pagination for this reason (some of the cmdlets in the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK can perform automatic pagination). The idea is that an app fetches the first page, checks to see if a token (pointer) to the next page is present, and if so, the app uses the token to fetch that page. The process continues until the app has fetched all available pages.

In the case of the Get-SPOContainer cmdlet, if more workspace data are available, the 201^st record in the set fetched from SharePoint is a pointer to the next page of (up to) 200 workspaces. Oddly, the information is in the form of a string followed by the actual token. Here’s an example:

Retrieve remaining containers with token: UGFnZWQ9VFJVRSZwX0NyZWF0aW9uRGF0ZVRpbWU9MjAyNDAzMzAlMjAwMCUzYTU5JTNhMjUmcF9JRD0yMDA=

To fetch the next page, run the Get-SPOContainer cmdlet and specify both the Paged and PagingToken parameters. The value passed in the PagingToken parameter is the token extracted from the record referred to above. The code must also remove the record from the set that will eventually be used for reporting purposes because it doesn’t contain any information about a workspace. For example:

$Token = $null
If ($LoopWorkspaces[200]) {
    # Extract the token for the next page of workspace information
    $Token = $LoopWorkSpaces[200].split(":")[1].Trim()
    # Remove the last item in the array because it's the one that contains the token
    $LoopWorkspaces = $LoopWorkspaces[0..199]
}

Looping to Fetch All Pages

A While loop can then fetch successive pages until all workspaces are retrieved. The curious thing is that at the end of the data, Loop outputs a record with the text. “End of containers view.” It’s just odd:

While ($Token) {
    # Loop while we can get a token for the next page of workspaces
    [array]$NextSetofWorkSpaces = Get-SPOContainer -OwningApplicationID a187e399-0c36-4b98-8f04-1edc167a0996 `
      -PagingToken $Token -Paged
    If ($NextSetofWorkSpaces[200]) {
        $Token = $NextSetofWorkSpaces[200].split(":")[1].Trim()
        $NextSetofWorkspaces = $NextSetofWorkspaces[0..199]
    } Else {
        $Token = $Null
        If (($NextSetofWorkSpaces[$NextSetofWorkspaces.count -1]) -eq "End of containers view.") {  
            # Remove the last item in the array because it contains the message "End of containers view."
            $NextSetofWorkspaces = $NextSetofWorkspaces[0..($NextSetofWorkspaces.count -2)]
        }             
    }
    $LoopWorkspaces += $NextSetofWorkspaces
}

Eventually, you have an array of all the Loop workspaces and can report it as in the previous script (Figure 1).

The script with the updated code can be downloaded from GitHub.

Another Example of SharePoint PowerShell Strangeness

I have no idea why the Loop developers thought it was a good idea to implement their unique style of PowerShell pagination in the Get-SPOContainer cmdlet. What they should have done is implement the All cmdlet as done elsewhere, like the Get-SPOSite cmdlet. Supporting easy retrieval of all workspaces together with server-side filtering capability would be more than sufficient for most scenarios and would result in simpler code to develop and maintain.

Last month, I wrote wondering if Microsoft cared about SharePoint PowerShell. This is yet another example of strangeness in SharePoint PowerShell that reinforces my feeling that no one in Microsoft does care.

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Loop Component eDiscovery is Possible Without Being Easy

Following yesterday’s article about using Loop components in Teams channel conversations, I was asked how I felt about how well Loop supports Microsoft 365 compliance solutions. The point is that Microsoft emphasizes the collaboration capabilities of Loop within an organization (but not outside because of the lack of external access) without delivering full support for basic compliance functionality like eDiscovery.

My view is simple. Loop components have been around for two years. In that time, there hasn’t been much change in how these components support compliance. In November 2021, when I wrote about Loop component support for Teams chat, I noted that the compliance records generated for chat messages contained pointers to the Loop files stored in OneDrive for Business. This is enough to find Loop components, but not in the context of the chat.

Loop Component eDiscovery with Content Search

In May 2022, I followed up by examining the topic of eDiscovery for Loop components in more detail and noted that it’s possible to run a content search for a keyword included in a Loop component but can’t open the file from preview. You can download the file and open it in OneDrive for Business, but only after giving the file a .fluid extension. The same is true for the components used in Teams channel conversations. I don’t remember searches ever finding retained copies of previous versions of chat components (stored in the site preservation hold library). This happens for components used in channel conversations (Figure 1).

In all cases, I could open the downloaded copy of a component. OneDrive for Business calls the web version of the Loop app to open the files (Figure 2).

In yesterday’s article, I used a compound message to illustrate Loop components in channel conversations. A compound message includes text and embedded elements, like a Loop component or a Stream video. You’ll notice that the results shown in Figure 1 only list the Loop components. To find the complete message, you must use keywords that are in the message and Loop components (the same or different keywords). You can then see the message posted to the channel (Figure 3).

Downloading Messages With Pointers to the Loop Component

There’s no trace of the Loop component because content search preview only displays text (including links and emojis). But when you download the compliance record and view the resulting message item, you can see the attachments. The loop component is represented as ‘card.html.’ The channel post was an announcement, so the other attachment is the graphic used in the announcement header.

For those wondering why the downloaded compliance record is displayed as an Outlook message, that’s because Teams compliance records are simplified copies of the actual Teams data stored as message items in Exchange Online mailboxes (a group mailbox in this case). Microsoft Search indexes the message items to make them available for eDiscovery. However, Loop components used in channel conversations are indexed separately in SharePoint Online and that’s why the search has two hits: one for the message, and one for the component.

Loop Component eDiscovery Premium

The situation is a little better in Purview eDiscovery Premium. Instead of a simple content search, eDiscovery Premium uses review sets retrieved from a collection of sources. The presentation of information from a review set is more insightful (Figure 5). In this instance, we can see that the content of the card.html attachment reveals that the Loop component is presented in an adaptive card called FluidEmbedCard.

Work to Do to Improve Loop Component eDiscovery

Microsoft is obviously enthused with Loop components. The technology is interesting and does a good job of making collaboration more accessible for users within a single tenant. However, it’s disappointing that eDiscovery of Loop components is still challenging two years after the first introduction of the technology in a Microsoft 365 application. You can certainly find the components, but investigators have too much work to do to knit everything together to create a seamless picture of how people use Loop components in Teams channel conversations.

So much change, all the time. It’s a challenge to stay abreast of all the updates Microsoft makes across Office 365. Subscribe to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook to receive monthly insights into what happens, why it happens, and what new features and capabilities mean for your tenant.

Synchronizing Loop Tasks with Planner

Updated: 6 June 2023

In a May 10 post in the Microsoft Technical Community, Microsoft discussed some new task management capabilities available through Loop Task List components that now surface in Planner. You can create the task list component in clients like OWA, Outlook desktop, and Teams chats or meeting agendas. Figure 1 shows a typical example with a task list component in the body of an OWA message. According to message center notification MC572515 (June 5), Microsoft will start to roll out the necessary changes in mid-June and complete worldwide deployment in mid-July 2023.

The big change here is the option to “Open in Planner” available from the […] menu at the top of the task list. In the past, Microsoft talked about roster containers (plans without Microsoft 365 groups) and a potential integration between lightweight plans and fluid (now Loop) components. It looks like being able to open the tasks created in a Loop task component in Planner is the outcome of that work.

Graph Planner Containers

The Microsoft Graph defines a planner container resource and notes that two types of planner containers are currently supported: plans contained in a Microsoft 365 group and plans contained in a planner roster.

In this context, the planner roster container holds the set of Loop tasks, the roster (of users authorized to work with the plan) are those who share the Loop component, and the tasks in the container are those created in the Loop component.

Working with Roster Containers in Planner

Figure 2 shows the plan after opening it in Planner. The tasks listed in the Loop task list are present and assigned to the right people. Clicking the Loop icon to the right opens the Loop component using the same browser interface as used if you open a Loop component from OneDrive for Business.

Most Planner plans are associated with a Microsoft 365 group. When working with tasks from a roster container, some features like comments and adding document attachments aren’t available. However, you can add checklist items, labels, update the task description, change the dates, status, and task priority, and add a URL to a web page (Figure 3). You can also add new members to the roster by assigning a task to someone that’s not already in the roster.

While the basics of tasks are synchronized (including new tasks added in Planner), don’t expect all the changes made in Planner to synchronize back to the Loop task list component. The Microsoft support article says that tasks in task list “stay in sync with a plan in Planner.” From this we understand that the roster container is independent of the Loop component. This makes sense because the Loop task object is simpler and doesn’t support the same properties as Planner does. The Planner-specific properties are accessible through the items stored in the roster container, and changes made to the task name, due date, and roster synchronize with Loop and appear in the component. If you add someone to a roster container, you’ll be prompted by Loop to grant access to that person to allow them to interact with the Loop component.

Tasks Everywhere

Because Loop can expose its tasks in Planner, the tasks become accessible elsewhere within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Figure 4 shows one of the tasks from the Loop task list opened through the To Do for iOS app (left) where it’s listed in the Assigned to me list. On the right, the Loop for iOS app opens the same task.

Microsoft refers to the ability to access tasks through different apps as “moving components around different surfaces,” which I guess means that the task objects are available to users via their app of choice.

Embedding Loop More Deeply

After waiting so long to see what Planner meant by roster containers, it’s nice to see an actual implementation. I’m not sure quite how many people will hop from one app to another after starting with a Loop task list, but it’s certainly possible if you want to do it.

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View Teams and Outlook Messages in Search Results

Microsoft Search and the results it delivers to users are in a state of constant flux. This is usually a good thing because it means that Microsoft is upgrading search capabilities to help users find information more effectively. Sometimes, things get out of step, and you can see extra results in one place that don’t appear in another. A little consideration usually comes up with a reason why this is so.

Take the example of the Messages vertical that Microsoft has added to Office.com. When you search from Office.com, the results include Teams and Outlook messages (Figure 1). In search parlance, the set of results exposed by the messages tab is referred as a “search vertical.” You can add custom search verticals to SharePoint search, but not to Office.com.

The Teams messages come from both chats and channel conversations. Selecting a Teams or Outlook message uses a deeplink to bring you to the source loaded in the Teams client or OWA.

Microsoft Search trims the search results so that users only see information from resources they have permission to access.

Why Messages from Deleted Teams Appear in Search Results

Sometimes search results resurrect messages from deleted groups. Take the second message listed in Figure 1, which comes from a conversation in the Project Athena group (a team). Selecting this message does nothing because it doesn’t have a deeplink to bring it to the source conversation.

Some investigation found that the team doesn’t exist anymore. I deleted the team since the conversation happened in 2018. However, the messages persist because the team came within the scope of a hold imposed by a retention policy. Microsoft Search relies on the compliance records the Microsoft 365 substrate captures for Teams chats and channel conversations, and these records remain in mailboxes until the retention period for the policy lapses. Therefore, the conversation remains available for search to find while the deeplink pointing to the source conversation is unavailable.

Microsoft Search in Bing

The interesting thing is that the ability to return messages in search results isn’t available in SharePoint search. You might expect this to happen because it’s a search for Microsoft 365 data. However, it’s a search of SharePoint resources, so the results only cover the information available to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. Personally, I think Search should deliver the same results in SharePoint Search as it does in Office.com, even if SharePoint Online doesn’t manage the items found. The lines between applications continue to blur and it seems strange to have artificial barriers where they’re not needed.

Where messages do turn up is in search results from Bing.com if you configure Microsoft search in Bing through the Search & Intelligence section of Org settings in the Microsoft 365 admin center. In effect, when you do this, you connect Microsoft 365 content to Bing to expose “work” results alongside results for internet sources. Accessing the work tab exposes results from different Microsoft 365 sources, including messages (Figure 2).

This capability has been available for at least six months. At least, we updated the coverage about Microsoft Search in the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook about six months ago to report its availability!

Loop Components in Search Results

While looking at the various results now available through Microsoft Search, I noticed that Loop components show up. I probably missed this in the past but felt that it’s worth noting that even though Loop components pose some eDiscovery challenges, the information in the components is fully indexed and discoverable as evident in the first two search results shown in Figure 3.

There’s nothing surprising here because the Loop components in Teams chats (and soon in OWA messages) exist as files in OneDrive for Business.

Nice to See Messages in Search

Given the amount of data people now store in the cloud, effective search facilities are increasingly important. Adding the new search vertical for messages to Office.com is very useful. It’s just a pity that the same capabilities aren’t available elsewhere.

Same Issue Exists for Teams and OWA

I’m still waiting for the arrival of Loop components in OWA. After writing about the announcement of Loop support for OWA in MC360766, I was asked about the eDiscovery and Compliance issue reported in the message center post and why some organizations might block the use of Loop components until Microsoft delivers a solution.

The same problem exists for Loop components created in Teams chat. Let me explain what the problem is by going through an example.

Creating a Problem in a Loop Component

First, we create a compliance issue in a Loop component posted in a Teams chat. In this case, it’s a conversation about potentially fraudulent activity (Figure 1) in a Loop paragraph. The physical storage for the component is in a fluid file stored in the originator’s OneDrive for Business account. Like other files shared in chats, the file is in the Microsoft Teams Chat Files folder.

It’s worth noting that Teams DLP policies do not currently check the content of Loop components. For instance, if the organization deploys a DLP policy to prevent users from sharing credit card numbers, it blocks this activity in regular chats, but not in Loop components.

Searching for Loops

I then opened the Microsoft Purview Compliance portal and created a new content search to look for any file or email containing the keyword “Arkana” as used in the Loop component. The search found three items, including one called “The Plan” (Figure 2).

As I note in a discussion about using Loop components in Teams chat, the Microsoft 365 substrate generates compliance records for messages posted in Teams chats. Although the substrate captures compliance records for messages containing loop components, they are empty apart from a link to the fluid file in their source OneDrive for Business account. For this reason, the compliance records do not appear in search results.

Accessing Loop Component Content

The content search preview does not support files containing loop components and displays the error:

“This document type is not supported by preview.”

To view the content, you can download a copy of the file from the search preview. This creates a file without an extension that cannot be opened. To solve the problem, I did the following:

• Gave the file the same fluid extension (e.g., The Plan.fluid) as used when Teams stores files containing Loop components in the Microsoft Teams Chat Files folder in OneDrive for Business.
• Moved the file into my OneDrive for Business account. Any folder will do.
• Double-clicked on the file. Office.com opened and displayed the contents (Figure 3).

The good news here is that an investigator can at least download Loop components from a content search preview to examine their contents. The bad news is that this needs to be done on a file-by-file basis.

Exporting Loops in Search Results

After using search preview to make sure that a search locates results that they want, the next step for compliance investigators is to export search results. A preview is just that: a snapshot of what to expect when a search runs. Before an export can happen, Microsoft 365 runs a full search. This might find items overlooked in the preview. In our test, the export included the fluid file containing the interesting content (Figure 4).

The problem now starts to become obvious. You can’t open a fluid file from exported search results. You can if you copy the file to your OneDrive for Business account, but not in its export location. I suspect that this is due to permissions. When you move or copy a fluid file into your OneDrive for Business account, you have full control over it. Left in the search export location, metadata containing permissions in the file likely stops someone from opening it unless they have permission to.

This causes a huge problem for investigators. It might be workable for internal investigators to copy discovered fluid files to their personal OneDrive for Business account to review the files there. It’s not feasible for external investigators and experts to do the same, especially if they don’t have access to OneDrive for Business or want to work offline.

I believe this is the reason why Microsoft is working on “an offline consumable export format.” In other words, as the search export process extracts copies of files containing Loop components from their source locations, it will create something like a PDF version of the files. If this doesn’t happen soon, more organizations will consider blocking Loop components for all Microsoft 365 apps, adding to Microsoft’s difficulties in convincing people that this method of collaboration is a real advance.

Same Issue for Emails

The same issue will occur in emails with embedded Loop components. These files will probably live in the sender’s OneDrive for Business account with permissions granted to all recipients to interact with the components. Microsoft will need to do the same magic to convert Loop content in emails to something consumable outside the tenant.

Of course, quite how this scheme works when external recipients are part of the addressee list remains to be seen. It might be that these recipients see a static version of the Loop content. I’ll let you know when OWA support for Loop components becomes available.

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Just in Time for Outlook

Updated: March 22, 2023

Microsoft Loop components have been available in Teams chat since November 2021. I haven’t heard about widespread usage, but that might be because people need time to adjust their collaboration habits. Access to Loop components in other applications is also a gating factor, but availability in OWA and Outlook for Windows (current channel preview) should help to address this concern. According to MC360766 (April 18, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 93234), Microsoft will roll out this feature to tenants configured for targeted release in early May.

Update: It took a little longer than predicted, but Loop components are now available in OWA.

So far, there’s no sign of Loop components in Outlook desktop, but I’m sure the components will arrive in my email any day now to deliver the same kind of functionality as available in Teams chat (Figure 1). In a nutshell, if an email contains a loop component, it exists as a file in the sender’s OneDrive for Business account that is shared with the email’s recipients. We’ll report more when the software is available.

IsLoopEnabled

This brings me to MC371268 (May 2), where Microsoft announces that “in response to customer feedback,” they’re retiring the existing settings to control the availability of Loop components and introducing a new control called IsLoopEnabled.

The control is part of the SharePoint Online tenant configuration and is set using the Set-SPOTenant cmdlet. You’ll need to upgrade the SharePoint Online management module to version 16.0.22413.12000 or later. Microsoft posted this version in the PowerShell Gallery five days ago. You can install or update the module from the PowerShell gallery or download an MSI file from Microsoft.

The replaced control is IsFluidEnabled, which enables the Fluid Framework within a tenant. Microsoft plans to retire the IsFluidEnabled setting on November 25, 2022. Going forward, the relevant settings in the SharePoint Online configuration are:

• IsLoopEnabled: Controls if Teams can use Loop components. The default is True (Enabled).
• IsCollabMeetingNotesFluidEnabled: Controls if fluid components are available in OneNote collaborate meeting notes.

Update: Following the availability of the preview version of the Loop app, the control for the Loop app, Outlook, Whiteboard, and the Office Online apps is via settings in the Cloud policy.

eDiscovery and Compliance Issues

Although eDiscovery searches can find Loop component files stored in OneDrive for Business, Microsoft acknowledges “limited eDiscovery workflow support.” With the additional of Loop support in Outlook, this aspect might become more problematic. For example, today, the preview feature for search results can render the full content of emails. This isn’t possible when an email contains a loop component because the preview window needs a software upgrade to fetch the content from OneDrive and display it inline within a message.

Another issue is with exports of search results. Today, Microsoft Purview can export emails (and the compliance records captured for Teams chats) found by searches as individual message files or in PST files. Microsoft says that the export format is “not consumable by existing tools,” and that they’re working on “an offline consumable export format.” Taken together, these statements make me think that the exported emails contain references (links) to OneDrive files that aren’t accessible to investigators working offline or independent experts who review eDiscovery results without access to the source tenant.

Making the content of search results available offline probably involves replacing the embedded link in messages containing Loop components with a static version of the content extracted from OneDrive.

This topic deserves a more comprehensive test, which I will get to once Outlook support for Loop components is available. In the meantime, organizations that don’t want to run into potential eDiscovery problems should strongly consider disabling Loop components for both Teams and Outlook by setting the IsLoopEnabled control to False.

Set-SPOTenant -IsLoopEnabled $False

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Available Now

Updated: 18 October 2023

The hoo-hah surrounding the announcement of the Microsoft Loop app at Microsoft’s Fall 2021 Ignite event missed a very important point. Microsoft released Loop (or Live) components in preview for Teams chat (November 30 update: Loop support in Teams chat is now generally available). When I originally wrote about Teams and Live components in July, Microsoft hoped to roll out the feature in mid-August. Perhaps the advent of the Microsoft Loop app delayed matters a tad, but I suspect that Microsoft also had other work to do to make loop/live/fluid components work smoothly in Teams. In any case, Loop components can now be used in chats. That is, if you remember to enable it for your tenant by running PowerShell, connecting to SharePoint Online, and updating the tenant configuration by executing the command:

Set-SPOTenant -IsFluidEnabled $True 

Based on what Microsoft said at Ignite, OWA is probably the next app to gain Loop components. Sometime in 2022, we’ll see the Microsoft Loop app and be better able to organize components in workspaces and pages.

Loop Components

Microsoft says that a loop component is an “atomic unit of productivity,” meaning that it’s designed to do one thing without reference to other components. Each component is a container for a type of information. Hence, we end up with the set of components available in Teams chat (Figure 1).

When you create a loop component in Teams chat, its physical representation is a file stored in your OneDrive for Business account. A chat message containing a Loop component used to be restricted to just that component, but now you can include other elements such as some text, emojis, and graphics.

When you send the chat message containing a loop component, its file is shared with the chat participants to allow them to edit the content and see updates as they occur. The sharing applied to loop components sent in Teams chat is the default sharing link defined in the SharePoint Online sharing policy for the organization. Obviously, you can edit the sharing link to use whatever permissions you want, subject to the settings in the sharing policy.

The dependency on OneDrive for Business means that guest users participating in a chat cannot create messages containing loop components. However, they can update loop components created and sent by tenant users.

Figure 2 shows three loop components, each in its own Teams chat message:

• Paragraph: a text box with some basic formatting capabilities (headings, bold, underline, strikethrough, bulleted list, numbered list. Insert web link). You can also paste graphics and add emojis, so life is good.
• To do list.
• Table.

Anyone used to Microsoft Office editors will be at home with inputting text into Loop components.

You can read and edit loop components in the Teams mobile client (iOS and Android). A small delay happens the first time you access a component, but afterwards the interaction is smooth (Figure 3).

Nested Loops

Another interesting aspects of loo[p components is that they can be nested. Type the slash key (/) when composing a loop and a pop-out menu appears (Figure 4) to allow you to choose a loop component to insert. You can insert as many loops a you like, with the exception being that it doesn’t seem like you can insert a paragraph inside another loop.

Loop Component Files in OneDrive

The fluid files (the containers used by Loop components) for Teams chats are in the Microsoft Teams Chat Files folder of the author’s OneDrive for Business account (Figure 5). When Loop components become more generally available in Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps, I anticipate that personal fluid files will remain in OneDrive (albeit in different folders, such as one used for components in messages sent by OWA) while shared components (like those in Teams channel messages) will be in SharePoint Online.

The synchronization used to make updates available to everyone with access to a loop component is like the autosave mechanism used by Office apps, but much faster. Possibly this is because synchronization occurs more often (as each character is typed) and process smaller amounts of data in each transaction.

Nested loops exist inside the host fluid file. Separate fluid files are not created for each of the components nested inside a loop.

Enabled Users Only

Users must be enabled for Loop and use a desktop or mobile client. If not, they’ll see that a Loop component is present in a chat but won’t see its content (Figure 6).

The user can click the link to access a read-only version of the content in a browser. The good news is that changes made by other users continue to synchronize to the browser to allow the user to see updates and who’s making the changes (Figure 7).

The browser interface is also invoked if you click on a fluid file in OneDrive. However, in this case, you can edit the component content.

Compliance Issues

When a user includes a loop component in Teams chat, the substrate generates a compliance record in the user’s Exchange Online mailbox. Unfortunately, the compliance record contains no content from the loop component. Instead, it’s just a pointer to the .fluid file stored in the user’s OneDrive for Business account. Microsoft Search does index these files, so they are included in results generated by content searches. I’ve updated my note about the difficulties involved in Teams backup to include this information.

Usable Preview

Loop components in Teams chat is a preview. As Teams is the first mainline application to incorporate loop components, you can expect to run into some glitches. However, the quality of the implementation is much improved over what I experienced after Microsoft originally announced Fluid components for Teams.

Insight like this doesn’t come easily. You’ve got to know the technology and understand how to look behind the scenes. Benefit from the knowledge and experience of the Office 365 for IT Pros team by subscribing to the best eBook covering Office 365 and the wider Microsoft 365 ecosystem.