Fluid Framework Comes to Outlook, Office.com, Gets Open Sourced

(Image credit: Microsoft)

The first usable instances of Microsoft’s Fluid Framework were announced at Microsoft Build, the company’s developer conference being hosted online this year. We’ll first see it on Office.com and Outlook. We first learned about the Framework just before Build 2019 and heard more about it at Ignite.

Components of documents should stay up to date and connected across apps. Here’s how Microsoft describes it:

“For example, tables, charts, and task lists can be inserted in Outlook for the web, so your sales numbers, project tasks, and research reports are always up to date. Within Office.com, Fluid Framework workspaces can be created and managed, including within your document activity feed, Recommended list, @mentions, or search for them across Office.com. And, because Fluid Framework components are lightweight, edits are instantaneous.”

A public preview of the features will start “soon,” beginning with Microsoft 365 Enterpsise and education subscribers using the Targeted Release ring before it goes out to everyone. 

Additionally, Microsoft announced at Build that Fluid Framework will be made open source, and that more documentation and tooling will be available next month. It will be available in a repository on GitHub.

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.