Productivity
How I hacked Microsoft Loop to ditch Excel
Start using Loop Components to scale with your work and increase productivity
Background
I’m a product design lead in the experience department at one of the largest ad agency networks in the world. In the past couple months, my team has grown from 11 product designers to 20. That’s nearly double in size in a short period of time, and with new designers came more clients, brands, and projects to oversee.
This was a huge and quick transition, which forced me to rethink the way my team operates and communicates.
How I did things previously
When I first started with 11 designers, I used an Excel grid to keep track of my team’s projects and their status.
The information in this grid included:
- Clients
- Brands
- Project Names
- Project Numbers
- Lead Designers (for that specific project)
- Supporting Designers
- Integrated Producers (our equivalent to a product or project manager)
- Current Status/Notes
- Key Milestone Dates
To be honest, this was a solid solution. Each designer was responsible for updating the information for the projects they owned, ensuring a level of accountability. I would then meet with the whole team each week to run through the grid line-by-line and discuss updates on each project.
This was straightforward and effective, and we needed no more than a half hour to go through it all.
But was it scalable?
Knowing that my team was about to double in size, I knew my current method wasn’t going to cut it.
If I stuck with this routine, I would have needed to extend my weekly team status meetings to at least a full hour. I didn’t think this was a good use of anyone’s time. Around the same time, some of my current and new designers were telling me that they were having too many meetings or that their meetings were too long. I was thinking about how to make these weekly meetings even leaner and shorter.
Enter: Microsoft Loop
If you haven’t heard of Loop yet, don’t feel bad. It’s a new Microsoft product, and it’s technically not fully rolled out yet.
Loop is the work tool you probably didn’t realize you needed. It’s also a bit hard to describe, but essentially, it’s a flexible document that contains various components for you to organize information in the way you need it.
It’s if Word, Excel, and OneNote had a millennial baby. Or if you’re familiar with tools like Notion and Coda, then you may say that Loop will eventually be a direct competitor. Right now, it’s lacking the full capabilities to do so.
Learning about this new tool was a game-changer. Some folks on my team have kept a close eye on its release, but as of press time, Microsoft has not announced an official launch date for their full web and desktop app experiences. The last rumblings about the app came out of the Ignite conference in 2022 where they announced some of the ways Loop will increase productivity and work across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
While there hasn’t been any hints on when the Loop app will be released, I wanted to see what I can do with Loop Components to help my team adapt to its new size.
Let’s talk Loop components
Even though it hasn’t been fully rolled out yet, Microsoft has teased us by offering up Loop Components. These are some of the initial building blocks that make up a Loop.
You can start using Loop Components in a Microsoft Teams chat message. It’s a bit hidden, but look for the Loop icon before sending a message.
When you click on the icon, you’ll have the option to insert a few different types of components:
- Bulleted list
- Checklist
- Numbered list
- Paragraph
- Table
- Task List
Select one of these, and Loop will be born. Well, not quite yet. Go ahead and give her a name, and hit send. Okay, now she’s born.
At surface level, this might seem cute but not entirely useful. The real magic happens when you open up your Loop in your browser.
The neat thing about Loop Components is that they can be viewed and edited in multiple places by multiple users, and it’s always synced in real-time because it’s part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
In your browser, you can start to build out your dream Loop without the visual clutter of Teams.
Need another table? You got it. Want to add a checklist? Boom. Insert a paragraph? Done. You get the point.
From Excel to Loop
After some toying around, I realized that I could probably ditch Excel and use Loops for my team’s new weekly stand-up meetings. Rather than having a single huge weekly status meeting, I implemented a new routine of 15-minute stand-ups back-to-back with each team led by one of my senior product designers.
We now use a Loop per team to capture all of our project information rather than using the old Excel grid.
In my newly designed Loop, I use a combination of components to organize the information that’s most relevant to my team.
This new set up allowed me to quickly see what projects and tasks each team member will be focusing on for the week. I can also gauge how they’re feeling about the week with the use of emojis next to their names.
If I needed to know more about a particular project, I could scroll down the Loop to see all of the project details that were part of my original Excel grid. Loop-specific features like checklists now make it easy to visually cross off milestones, and dates are easily changed with a couple quick clicks rather than typing it in.
Teammates can also mention each other in notes, which helps reduce the number of calls we need to make. It’s a level of asynchronous work that allows everyone to move along at their own pace without interrupting anyone else.
These improvements in the way information is presented and updated have made it easier for my team to keep me up-to-date with leaner meetings and agile communications.
Final thoughts
I see flexible and dynamic “documents” as the future of conducting business, especially in this new era of increased remote and virtual work. I hope to see redundant files and version control issues a thing of the past and less time wasted on administrative-like tasks that take away from my team’s ability to do creative work
This system isn’t foolproof, but I’m hoping that by jumping on the Loop bandwagon early, I will have future-proofed my team.
Since I first implemented Loops into my team’s workflow in December 2022, I’ve noticed some incremental feature changes, including sorting options for table column headers, and “+ Add” button at the bottom of tables, and next-day recap email of Loops I was tagged in. Not all designers on my team have seen these changes, so it seems like they’re being slowly introduced to select customers. This gives me hope that the the full app is coming soon.
What’s next
It’s still unclear as to when Microsoft will be launching the full Loop experience, but you can sign up to receive updates here. Until then, have fun playing around with Loop, and perhaps enjoy your new way of working!
Note: This is not an ad for Microsoft or Loop, and I am in no way affiliated with the company except for using their products through the company I work for.
If you enjoyed this article, please leave a note in the comments. If you’re interested in articles like this or anything related to product design and design leadership, let me know what you’d like to read about. This is my first Medium article, so any feedback is greatly appreciated.
