Sound familiar? A new team member joins your project and asks on day three: «Where do I actually find our shared notes?» You remember, they live in a Loop workspace. But who created it in the first place? And has your new colleague already been invited? You track down the person who set up the workspace, ask for an invitation, wait. Two days pass before access is finally in place.
The reverse case is at least as common. Somebody leaves the project but keeps access to the shared workspace, because nobody thought to remove the sharing. Neither of these is an exception, they are everyday reality in practically every team that works on a project over several months and whose line-up changes along the way.
Both situations have the same root cause. The Loop workspace lives separately from the team that actually works with it. Microsoft has built in a solution that many teams still do not know about: the Loop workspace directly inside the Teams channel. Since May 2026 there is even a dedicated cloud policy for it, which admins can use to block standalone workspaces outside Teams channels entirely. 🔗
What a Loop workspace in a Teams channel is
At its core, a workspace is a collection point for several Loop pages, comparable to a folder for jointly editable content: notes, task lists, tables, status pages. Within a page you then work with individual Loop components, small building blocks such as checklists or table rows that several people can type into at the same time and in real time. Normally you create a workspace via loop.microsoft.com and invite the people who should work on it individually or by link.
For a while now there has been a second, often more practical option: the workspace directly as a tab in a Teams standard channel. The difference behind it matters. Instead of you maintaining the member list manually, Teams takes care of it for you. Whoever is in the channel automatically has access to the workspace. If somebody leaves the team, that person also loses access to the workspace, without any action on your part.
Step by step: creating a workspace in a channel
This is how you set up a new Loop workspace in a Teams channel: 🛠️
- Open the standard channel that needs a shared working area.
- In the channel header, click the plus symbol to add a new tab.
- Select «Apps» in the window and search for «Loop».
- Give the workspace a meaningful name, for example «Client project Meier Q3», and click «Create».
- Done. The new tab is immediately visible to all current and future channel members, without any further invitation.
One note upfront: this feature is currently only available in standard channels, not in private or shared channels. It can also happen that individual people cannot create a workspace themselves because of their licence or organisational policies. They can still collaborate on an existing workspace that a colleague has set up.
Linking an existing workspace to the channel
If you have already created a workspace via the Loop app and want to connect it to a channel afterwards, that works just as easily:
- Click the plus symbol in the channel again and select «Apps», then «Loop».
- Switch to the «Workspaces» section in the dialogue.
- Select the existing workspace you want from the list.
One important difference here: a workspace that you originally created via the Loop app does not automatically adopt the channel membership when you link it. The access rights stay exactly as you originally assigned them. The automatic synchronisation only applies to workspaces that were created from within the channel from the very start.
What happens automatically in the background
Teams takes care of several things for you as soon as the workspace is linked to the channel. The owners of your team automatically become owners of the workspace. The sensitivity label of the workspace adopts the classification of the Microsoft 365 group behind the team. That creates consistency in how confidential project information is handled, without you having to configure anything yourself.
The lifespan of the workspace is tied to the team as well. If you delete the team, the associated workspace automatically disappears with it. You can delete individual pages inside a workspace separately at any time. Removing the whole workspace independently of the team is not foreseen, for that you would have to dissolve the entire team. And if you accidentally remove the Loop tab from the channel, that is no disaster: add it again and you can simply pin the previously created workspace back.
By the way, you are not limited to one workspace per channel. If you need separate working areas for different sub-projects in the same channel, you can create several workspaces in parallel. Each one gets its own tab and its own member list tied to the channel.
Channel workspace or workspace from the Loop app: which fits when?
Two questions help you decide which option suits your project. 💡
Should everyone with access to the channel automatically see the workspace too, even if the team line-up changes over the course of the project? Then the channel workspace is the right choice. That is typical for project teams where new people join or leave the project as time goes on.
Or do you need to define precisely who gets access yourself, independently of a Teams membership, for example because external partners are involved or a cross-channel steering group has to be included? Then create the workspace directly in the Loop app and manage the member list yourself. This is exactly the approach I use for larger client projects, when I build a dedicated project hub with a tracker, status page and tasks, with a deliberately assembled list of participants instead of automatic channel synchronisation.
For the IT people in your organisation the governance side is interesting too: because a channel workspace is fully bound to the Microsoft 365 group behind the team, retention policies, eDiscovery and compliance requirements run along automatically, without separate configuration for every single workspace.
Practical tip: keep the workspace clearly separate from file storage
Do not mix up the channel workspace with your file storage. If you already organise documents in a SharePoint folder in the channel, use the Loop workspace deliberately as the place for living content: notes, brainstorms, status pages, running task lists. Finished documents still belong in the «Shared» tab (formerly «Files»). And name the workspace unambiguously from day one, for instance with the client name and quarter. That helps everyone who joins the project later find their way around immediately, without having to search for long. 📌
Conclusion & try it out now
The Loop workspace in the Teams channel solves a problem that comes up in almost every project: the question of who actually has access and who keeps that access up to date. Instead of tracking invitations manually, you work with a member list that adapts to your team automatically.
Try it now: open your next project channel, add the Loop tab and test how automatic access management feels for your team. You will notice how much administrative effort simply falls away. 🚀
