Microsoft launches new features for Cortana. The voice assistant is to become a personal productivity assistant for Microsoft 365 users, revolutionizing the workflow of professionals in the film and video industry. For Windows 10, Cortana will then be available as chat-based help to get information from Microsoft applications – such as appointments entered in the calendar or to retrieve tasks from the To-Do app, as well as to create entries by voice input. In addition, the search engine query via Bing is possible. The functions are initially available with the May update only in the U.S., other countries are to follow.
Cortana reads and responds
Outlook for iOS gets an update for the "Play my Emails"-function. Cortana will be able to reply to mails and create appointments, as well as write standardized replies, for example, that you will be a little late for a meeting. In the coming weeks, the mail reader will be released for Android for the first time.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers with English-language Exchange mail accounts will automatically get a briefing feature that will let Cortana act as an intelligent assistant, alerting them to deadlines and pending responses.
All this is subject to high security standards for personal data, according to Microsoft’s blog post. Originally, Microsoft had already announced new productivity features for Cortana from spring last year. With the introduction, the smarthome and music control as well as the support of third-party apps should be removed – information about this is now not included in the post.