Microsoft has announced a series of new hybrid work innovations to address the challenges of in-person and remote collaboration. You may have seen the promotion of a new app called Microsoft Loop:
“In the last 18 months, the world changed, and we adapted to a new working environment where people had to complement traditional communication tools and in-person collaboration with alternative solutions, quickly digitalizing everything we do across our life.”
Microsoft started the Fluid Framework two years ago as an open-source project for building collaborative applications. Autodesk created a similar technology to address the same need for real-time collaboration and document-based editing. Upon learning about Fluid, Autodesk realized the opportunity for accelerating long-term strategy of building collaboration platform, by contributing this technology to Fluid Framework and adopting of the underlying tech stack.
This technology aligns surprisingly well with Autodesk’s vision for the future of collaboration. Fluid is tackling similar challenges we are trying to solve at Autodesk with Forge Data, to enable the next generation of connected apps. Autodesk’s CEO Andrew Anagnost’s keynote for AU 2021 included his opinion:
“it’s not our files that are valuable, but the data that’s locked inside them. What if we could extend the value that Autodesk’s Forge platform delivers today to connect entire ecosystems with accessible, extensible, and open data flows in the cloud?”
This new Whiteboard app makes “Real-time collaboration easier” and is brought to life through Fluid Framework. The vision for this framework is broad – it is meant to enable fluid experiences across many Microsoft applications. Microsoft and Autodesk are keen to work with others in the industry on this important new technology, available to all under an open-source license.
The open-source work between Microsoft and Autodesk on the Fluid framework started modestly in early 2021, when an Autodesk software architect connected with a Microsoft PM through LinkedIn. The connection grew from the engineering level to conversations at the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and CVP (Corporate Vice President) level. A dedicated team from Autodesk started contributing to the open-source project – and the “AutoFluid” team started working together on designing and building new features into Fluid. In less than a year, the team has accomplished several milestones together:
- Innovations and contributions to an open-source package with over 140k lines of code.
- Upcoming new capabilities in Fluid (I.e., typed data, experimental partial checkout, and large document support)
- Prototypes that explore the use of Fluid in Autodesk specific use cases.
These features are currently experimental and available in npm registry under the scope name “@fluid-experimental.”
One of the prototypes was presented at Microsoft Build 2021. We see a collaborative workflow based in a virtual reality context. In this demo, one persona is reviewing an engine design in VR (Virtual Reality) – and another persona is looking at the same 3D engine model through the Autodesk Viewer.
- We can see indicators for each of the collaborators, what they are pointing at and the selection they make on the internal parts of the model.
- We also see the shared state of the model, it is synchronized using Fluid cross collaborators and it can be viewed in the table component.
- Finally, we see that when the values are changed in the table – the viewer instantly updates to reflect those changes in real-time.
The Fluid Framework will enable collaboration across teams, tools, and industries. For Microsoft, these Fluid Framework powered experiences can be integrated into Microsoft 365 (e.g., Teams), with data being edited in real-time. For Autodesk, that will mean architects sharing steel beam location and sizing with structural engineers and manufacturers; or mechanical engineers sharing a bill of materials with suppliers. All these scenarios depend on up-to-date information being shared in real-time.
Nedal and Tobias are authors of this blog. Nedal Horany is Senior Software Engineer at Autodesk. Tobias Hathorn is Senior Manager, User Experience Design.
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