Announcing Fluid Framework 2.0 Beta

Kashif Qureshi

Nick Simons

We’ve seen dramatic growth in the demand for collaborative tools over the last decade. In modern work, people see real-time collaboration as an essential component of the tools they use. At Microsoft, we’ve built highly scalable real-time collaboration into our applications for years. Fluid Framework brings these capabilities to the open-source developer community.

Today Fluid Framework 2.0 is available in Beta! Fluid Framework 2.0 is an open-source platform for rapidly building powerful collaborative experiences. It offers an intuitive programming model that makes it simple for developers to synchronize shared state between clients in real-time.

Developers can use Fluid Framework 2.0 to add collaboration to new or existing apps. It offers a schematized data model, so developers can continue to use their existing data model and quickly make their apps collaborative.

In addition to existing Azure Fluid Relay support, we now support the newly announced SharedPoint Embedded service, which allows end users to collaborate on content stored inside their organization’s Microsoft 365 tenant. This offers all the features of Fluid Framework combined with the scale, performance, security, and compliance of Microsoft 365. Now developers can offer more choices for the storage and handling of their end users’ collaborative data.

How it works

Fluid Framework enables real-time collaboration by providing developers with easy-to-use data structures which Fluid Framework automatically keeps in sync between clients. Fluid Framework handles the complexity of synching and merging changes from multiple clients, so developers don’t need to write any custom server code or complex merge semantics.

Fluid Framework offers an approachable programming model that leverages mainstream web technology while delivering best-in-class performance, correctness, and low service costs. Learn more at https://aka.ms/fluid.

Data Modeling with SharedTree

We’ve listened to developer feedback and made it even easier to model collaborative data with Fluid Framework 2.0. The new SharedTree Distributed Data Structure (DDS) provides an intuitive programming interface for working with data and supports a broad range of data types including objects, arrays, and maps.

Like other Fluid Framework distributed data structures, SharedTree is designed to use the same patterns developers would use when working with local data structures such as an object model. The difference is that the data can be changed remotely and is kept in sync by the Fluid Framework. SharedTree includes sophisticated merge semantics for working with arrays and supports features like atomic move operations that make working with collaborative data much simpler.

SharePoint Embedded

Fluid Framework 2.0 beta offers support for a new relay service called SharePoint Embedded that allows developers to keep collaborative data within a Microsoft 365 tenant. Enterprise developers can build collaborative line of business apps while benefiting from all features of Microsoft 365 storage including security and compliance. ISVs can also leverage this option in their collaborative apps, with the data being managed within the end customer’s tenant.

SharePoint Embedded support, in addition to the existing Azure Fluid Relay support, gives developers more choice and flexibility in picking the best service pairing for their Fluid Framework apps based on their customer’s needs.

Learn more about SharePoint Embedded and how developers can build Fluid Framework-based collaborative apps with it.

Fluid Framework usage today

Fluid Framework has been powering various first-party Microsoft apps as well as third party apps from our partners.

• Microsoft Loop, our new app designed for supercharging collaborative work, is powered by Fluid Framework technology and includes Loop components that are kept in sync across various apps. It’s already powered by SharePoint Embedded in production!
• Microsoft Whiteboard is our app for real-time visual collaboration on a shared canvas and harnesses the performance and efficiency of Fluid Framework
• Microsoft Teams Live Share is an SDK that allows developers to build collaborative experiences in Microsoft Teams and offers a no-config service setup backed by Azure Fluid Relay
• Hexagon, an open-source contributor to Fluid Framework, has built a cloud-based platform, Hexagon Nexus, that connects people, technologies, and data to drive innovation and collaboration for the manufacturing industry
• Autodesk is an open-source contributor to Fluid Framework and has built various apps and solutions leveraging the technology to provide real-time collaboration features to users of their applications

Start building today!

Fluid Framework 2.0 is now available in Beta, with general availability planned for this summer.

Visit the following resources to learn more:

• Get Started with Fluid Framework 2.0
• Sample app code using SharedTree and SharePoint Embedded
• For questions or feedback, reach out via Github
• Connect directly with the Fluid team, we’d love to hear what you’re building!
• Follow @FluidFramework on X (Twitter) to stay updated

We’re extremely excited about all the innovations in Fluid Framework 2.0 to enable rapid development of real-time collaborative experiences and empower developers to offer a highly scalable and performant experience to their users! We look forward to listening and learning more from the community on Github.

For news and other announcements, follow @Microsoft365Dev on X (Twitter)

Kashif Qureshi Principal Product Manager

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Nick Simons Principal Product Manager

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