What can it do?

Loop appears to be heavily integrated within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, and will allow you to create pages that can then contain text, images, videos and other embedded components adding functionality such as Polls and Q&A.

Collaboration is a key focus of Loop, particularly for organisations and those seeking to document things in real-time with others. Pages can be shared with Office groups within workspaces, and Loop components will also work across other Office 365 apps including Microsoft Teams and Outlook.

Developers will also be able to build Loop components that can appear within Loop pages.

How does it differ from Notion?

At this stage it’s a little hard to tell, as we haven’t seen any hands-on demos from Microsoft recently. However, Notion is likely to be a more mature product at this point given its position in the market and the recent addition of its AI tools.

That said, if you’re already heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem and like Notion then Loop is probably going to be an app you’ll want to try. It’s integration with the other Office apps, and the forthcoming Copilot functionality could lead to a compelling product.

Is it free?

Microsoft hasn’t yet announced pricing details for Microsoft Loop, as it’s still in private preview. However it’s probably a safe bet to assume that while there may be free functionality available for Loop, Microsoft will probably charge for additional features or look to include it in its commercial Office 365 licenses.

Given the recent AI announcements such as Copilot, it’s easy to see Microsoft charging extra for AI-related functionality.

Is it available yet?

As of March 21, 2023 the Loop app is still not generally available. Microsoft says it’s running a private preview, but so far very few people appear to have have been allowed into the preview.

On the 21st March, the Microsoft Loop Twitter account tweeted “Something is coming” but so far no further details have been released.

Notion has soared in popularity in recent times, but there’s still no official way to integrate the service with Microsoft Teams. However, there are some ways you can consume or create Notion data from Teams.

Create Notion database items from Teams

The easiest way to create Notion database items from Teams is to integrate with a third-party platform such as Zapier or Automate.io - the latter of which Notion themselves recently acquired.

Power Automate is another alternative, but there’s no out of the box task for Notion. So while you can trigger flows from Teams or elsewhere, you’d need to write some code to call the Notion REST API yourself to create database items.

Getting started with these platforms is simple. Simply create a Notion account if you don’t have one already, and then create an account with your automation platform of choice. In the case of Automate.io, after signing in you can connect your Notion account and your Microsoft 365 account and then setup a workflow.

The workflow allows you to pick what changes in Microsoft 365 you would like to trigger a new database item in Notion. For example, you may choose the “New message in Microsoft Teams” trigger on Automate.io, and have a new database item added to Notion containing the message and the author details.

It’s worth noting that these automation platforms have limited free tiers - if you’re creating lots of triggers that are called frequently, you may need to pay for the premium tiers.

Show Notion content in Teams

If you’re looking to show Notion content within a Teams channel, your best bet is to use the custom website tabs app to embed the Notion web app.

You can use the Website app to show the Notion website in a Teams channel tab

However this comes with some significant limitations - there’s no single sign on between Teams and Notion, so you’ll need to frequently sign in to Notion.

Performance of the Notion web app can also sometimes be sub-par when used within Teams tabs.