Microsoft Releases New Cortana Experiences
- Paul Thurrott
- May 27, 2020
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Concurrent to the release of Windows 10 version 2004, the new standalone Cortana app is also available, as are some related new Cortana experiences across Microsoft 365.
“With recent events leading to the world’s largest work-from-home shift, we could all use some assistance to stay caught up with work while juggling personal responsibilities,” Microsoft corporate vice president Andrew Shuman writes. “We’re featuring updates available starting today with Cortana, your personal productivity assistant in Microsoft 365, to make it easier to get time back on your busy schedule and focus on what matters.”
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Here’s what’s new.
Cortana for Windows 10 is now available. The new standalone and chat-based Cortana app is now out of beta and ready to enhance your productivity. “You can ask Cortana using natural language to quickly check your schedule, connect with people, set reminders, or add tasks in Microsoft To Do,” Microsoft notes. “You can also find local information, get definitions, and keep track of the latest news, weather, and finance updates with Bing as a Cortana optional connected service.”
Updates to Play My Emails are now available in Outlook for iOS. Play My Emails now lets you ask Cortana to schedule a meeting in response to an email and add an email to your tasks list, at least in the iOS version of Outlook. “We have also introduced voice commands and touch targets for sending responses to meeting invitations as well as an option to quickly join an active online meeting or send an ‘I’m running late’ message to the participants,” Microsoft says. These new updates are now generally available for customers in the United States with Play My Emails in Outlook for iOS and, yes, the version for Outlook for Android is coming “in the coming weeks.”
Cortana Briefing email is now available for enterprise customers. The new Briefing email from Cortana is a personalized brief that will appear in your Outlook inbox at the start of your workday, providing “intelligent, actionable recommendations of documents for you to review ahead of the day’s meetings and drawing your attention to pending requests or commitments from prior emails that you may want to follow up on.” The Briefing email is rolling out in First Release for Microsoft 365 Enterprise users with Exchange Online mailboxes in English now.