Tech

Microsoft Loop, an interesting alternative to Notion

It is impossible to talk about Microsoft Loop without talking about Notion, it is impossible to talk about Notion without explaining what it consists of, and explaining what Notion is is more complicated than it may seem. In my case, I have known it since my colleague Tomás chose it as the best application/service in 2020. On that occasion, he had to explain what it consists of and, since I have known and used it since then and because of that review, I think that I will take advantage of your explanation of that occasion.

From organizing large projects or trying to bring order to our lives with a GTD, to creating and maintaining lists of minor but important matters, such as the upcoming releases that we don’t want to miss or the wines that we have been tasting and have loved (or also those that have horrified us, so as not to make the mistake again), Notion is a blank slate in which “we can create notes and documents, wikis, manage projects and tasks, and really do just about anything.”. If you have ever used applications/services such as OneNote, Evernote or similar, we can say that it is somewhat similar to them, but without many of the limitations that we find in them.

Its main virtue is, on the other hand, a handicap in terms of usability, just as it is much more difficult to create a drawing from scratch than to limit yourself to coloring one that has already been created. Notion puts the space, it is the user who must fill it with the type of content and the format they want. This makes the first contact can be somewhat traumaticbut as you get familiar with how it works and discover its possibilities, it becomes a tool that can become essential.

Microsoft announced Microsoft Loop in November 2021, at the Microsoft Ignite event, but until now it has been in closed beta, so it was not possible to test it. However, and from today, Microsoft Loop has made the leap to public preview, so all users who want it can already try it, accessing it from this link. And from the first glance, as we could already imagine, we find a great resemblance to Notion (although there are some differences between both services) and that Microsoft also intends to integrate Copilot here, that is, its AI, undoubtedly in response to Notion AI, Notion’s assistant.

After a first test, which I will undoubtedly expand on later since what I have seen so far seems promising, I have indeed observed that Microsoft Loop is still not very reliable or stable. In about half an hour I have found no less than 10 error messages in which the service alerted me that the changes I had made were not going to be saved. Obviously this will improve in the future, but at the moment it is not yet reliable enough to trust it exclusively with important data and tasks.

The main advantages of Microsoft Loop over Notion are that, of course, integrates seamlessly with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, which allows you to access your documents from any device or location, also knowing that they will always be kept up to date. However, this integration with the online services of those from Redmond also supposes a certain limitation, since it is limited exclusively to them, while Notion offers a broader scope.

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