Microsoft: This open-source technology points the way to the collaborative future of work


Microsoft is showing more elements that enable real-time, low-latency collaboration from the web in desktop and mobile apps.

Microsoft-This-open-source-technology-points-the-way-to-the-collaborative.jpg

Image: Microsoft

The future of hybrid work that Microsoft sees when people return to offices and workplaces - at least temporarily - continues to include remote collaboration, some asynchronous and some in real time.

"During the pandemic, team productivity is paramount: a group of people can work together," said Rhajesh Jha, executive vice president of experiences and devices at Microsoft, at the recent Build conference. "We believe this is the era of collaborative apps where collaboration is at the center, whether it's in sync in the context of a video meeting, or out of sync with documents and chat."

"Collaboration must be at the core of new applications," added Jha.

The technology Microsoft hopes to achieve this new group productivity is the open source Fluid framework.

Interactive Fluid components enable real-time, low-latency web editing in teams and other Office apps. However, you can also enable asynchronous collaboration. With Fluid, collaborative editing of a document is accelerated, as all changes are displayed more quickly to everyone else. A list, table or a set of action elements can, however, also be fluid components that everyone can create and edit together in their own time.

Teams is the logical place to do this as you can use it as a launcher for other apps, including running in meetings. Fluid components are now available in the private preview for Microsoft 365 (currently only by invitation, broader access will be possible in the next few months).

SEE: 50 Time-Saving Tips to Speed ​​Up Your Work in Microsoft Office (Free PDF) (TechRepublic)

A Fluid component can be pinned to a specific chat that you are collaborating on, or you can copy and paste a Fluid component from one team chat to another to involve more people. You can also copy them into an email message (or possibly a Word document). The data that make up the fluid part of the collaboration remains active and can be edited and continues to be synchronized with everyone.

According to a session Fluid software developer Sam Broner held at Build, Fluid's real-time collaboration is a simpler back-end architecture because it doesn't require a cache on the server or a real-time hub on the client. "The teams found that Fluid can replace critical parts of their architecture, but with improved performance and lower engineering costs," said Broner.

Fluid components in a team chat.

Image: Microsoft

You can pin a Fluid component or add it to a Teams Outlook email.

Image: Microsoft

Since it is an underlying web app, a fluid component works on mobile devices with an appealing design.

Image: Microsoft

Fluid for everyone

Thanks to the open source Fluid framework, Fluid components can also be integrated into third-party apps that include SharePoint in Microsoft 365 (used by Teams) or the new Azure Fluid Relay service (a managed service that extends across hundreds of Users scaled) can use per session) or another Fluid service as a backend for synchronizing changes between employees. A Fluid component created to run on one Fluid backend will work with another Fluid backend, so organizations can use their own instance of the Azure Fluid Relay service or the Fluid Local Service (although anyone who works together would have to use the same fluid service to work together).

The Azure Fluid Relay service.

Image: Microsoft

Developers creating Fluid components can also create their own various types of Fluid data, such as: B. sticky notes or exploded 3D diagrams based on CAD files.

In addition to the demos of Fluid in Teams and Outlook, Microsoft showed prototype apps from Autodesk, Officeatwork and Monday Coffee that use Fluid for various types of collaboration in real time. Autodesk showed a CAD viewer where two people could look at the same 3D object and see what view the other person was looking at (which would make a discussion easier because you can point at things like you would if the two of you were in front of it the object would be the same screen). Your 3D viewer (and an inspector that shows the status of your Fluid data) are now part of the open source Fluid framework.

The collaborative 3D viewer from Autodesk protoype integrated in Fluid.

Image: Microsoft

"All of our customers expect to be able to work together across teams, tools and industries," said Arno Zinke, Autodesk's chief platform architect. "Going forward, the architect of a building will work more directly with another architect, or with designers and manufacturers, or even with suppliers of parts like windows and HVAC. And all of that will happen in real time based on the same data, the latest data. "

Fluid enables the joint editing of dynamic placeholders from Officeatwork in Office.

Image: Microsoft

Officeatwork has shown a prototype of Fluid for dynamic placeholders in its Office add-in, which contains the correct logo, company information, official signature files and other data that should be consistent in all of your documents that can be stored in SharePoint or collected via a Power Automate flow, logic apps, or other industry data storage. The Azure Fluid Relay service enables two people in the Officeatwork Control Center to collaborate on a signature that is shared by multiple people and edit the same placeholder, which is also dynamically updated for users.

Developers who want to build apps for teams with Fluid components can package those apps with the standard Team SDK and use the Fluid Library for Microsoft 365, which integrates with Microsoft 365 tenants instead of expecting organizations to start their own Azure Fluid Relay operation. This means that these apps use Office Single Sign-On and can pull data from Microsoft Graph and save data in Fluid files that are stored in OneDrive and SharePoint (using the SharePoint Fluid Service) so that they remain in the Microsoft 365 tenant . Installing the app in Teams and adding it to a team meeting sets the permissions so that anyone in the meeting can access and participate in the Fluid file.

"The team meeting expansion points are the ideal place to work with Fluid," said Dan Roney, Fluid program manager.

The prototype team app from MondayCoffee Fluid for joint meeting notes in a team meeting.

Image: Microsoft

MondayCoffee demonstrated a prototype meeting note tool designed for teams using the Fluid Framework libraries. Here everyone can record their notes on the meeting in a structured, shared document. Information is written to a database so that you can easily keep track of any decisions or action items made for a particular project, which are automatically converted into planner tasks.

This prototype will be added to the MondayCoffee Teams app soon, along with additional features like shared sticky notes.

Developers and organizations that want to use Azure Fluid Relay or Fluid Library for Microsoft 365 can request the private preview. Fluid components are just web apps. Fluid works with any Vue framework such as React, Angular or Vue, with the functions for collaboration being combined in a web library. If you just want to try Fluid Collaboration in Approval Documents, the original Fluid Office preview is still available. Or you can play around with a Fluid picture gallery, brainstorming app, and even a shared Sudoku game in the Fluid Framework playground, and developers can copy the Fluid projects to start building their own apps.

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