Microsoft’s real-time collaboration tech, Fluid Framework, is now available in Outlook and Office on the web.
The Redmond, Washington-based company has been working on and talking about Fluid Framework for some time, but now it’s clearer than ever what it does.
The best way to describe Fluid Framework is actually to start with Office’s biggest competitor: Google. Google Docs significantly changed the way people collaborate on projects by taking the document and putting it in the cloud. People can then connect to the online document and work on it simultaneously.
Fluid Framework expands on that collaborative concept by removing the idea of a document entirely. Instead, Fluid consists of several ‘blocks’ of a document, called ‘Fluid components.’ These can be edited in real-time by anyone in any app.
For example, users could take data from a spreadsheet and plug it into a table. That table can then be brought into a text document another user is writing. Changes will instantly sync, so if the spreadsheet data gets updated, the document will reflect that.
The initial release includes text, tables, agendas and lists. Those Fluid components will be available through Outlook for the web and can be plugged into online Office 365 documents. Further, the Fluid preview will be open to Microsoft 365 enterprise users in the next few months starting with those on the Targeted Release Cycle.
Additionally, Microsoft says it’s making Fluid Framework open-source. That should help developers build experiences that use Fluid Framework as well as allow others to build on an expand the system.
If you’re curious about Fluid Framework, you can play around with a preview of the technology here.
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