Microsoft has begun to transform the Fluid Office web platform concept into reality, reimagining the office suite into a more powerful toolkit with an emphasis on collaboration – the first interactive blocks appeared in Teams, OneNote, Outlook, and Whiteboard.

Microsoft presented the Fluid Framework at the Build 2020 developer conference. The main idea is to create separate mini-applications for specific tasks with their subsequent integration into different documents and retain full editing capabilities. Fluid components are separate building blocks that help you complete various tasks without leaving the chat, emails, meetings, etc. That is, you do not need to launch one or another application to work with the file, but you can work with it in a single working environment.

New Fluid components in Team meetings make it easier to schedule, take notes, assign tasks as part of a team call and provide access to important content anytime.

Agenda, notes, and meeting tasks will automatically be placed in the new OneNote Meeting Notes tab/section. You can also use Fluid components in Outlook – in email or calendar, making it easier to manage your agenda, notes, and tasks across applications. Animations at the top and bottom give a visual representation of how the function works.

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This is how Fluid components move through many Office applications.

Microsoft has also redesigned the Whiteboard online collaboration whiteboard into a canvas for hosting Fluid components: the developers have added new cursors that will allow you to see edits made by colleagues in real-time. There’s even a new virtual laser pointer to grab attention and reaction stickers for a livelier, more productive work experience. Fluid blocks with tables and lists of tasks can be added directly to the board, and now all applications will look and work the same on all devices and platforms. With an interactive whiteboard, you can use the app as a dashboard to watch the editing of Fluid components in real-time.

This is just the beginning of the Fluid rollout, and so far, the functionality is limited to the cloud-based Microsoft 365. When Microsoft completes the Fluid integration, it will forever change how you create documents, share them, and ultimately get work done.

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Separately, Microsoft talked about updating Teams and Microsoft Teams Rooms.

What’s new in Teams and Microsoft Teams Rooms

Front row – A new immersive room layout for meetings in Microsoft Teams Rooms – makes interaction more natural and gives participants in the room a sense of connection with people connected remotely. The virtual meeting is now surrounded by useful information about the meeting, such as agenda, tasks, and notes, and the chat will be clearly visible to all participants. The video gallery will be located at the bottom of the screen.

New video layouts in Microsoft Teams Rooms distribute the video gallery across multiple displays when no screen sharing is in progress. Remotely connected participants will appear larger and more realistic. Also coming soon will be “live reactions,” “Spotlight,” the ability to pin multiple video streams, and a chat window using the classic video grid layout.
Teams mobile app users will be able to access PowerPoint Live and Dynamic View on their devices. A custom background is now available on iOS (this feature is coming to Android soon).

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