AI in Microsoft 365 is driving a significant shift in how people interact with Microsoft 365 applications. Our experiences personalize and adapt to you, support you and help amplify your skills. You can see this shift in the personalized experiences we are enabling through Cortana, your personal productivity assistant in Microsoft 365. Cortana helps you stay on top of your day, save time and do your best work.

Today, Microsoft is announcing an updated Cortana experience in Windows 10 that will deliver more help from your assistant in Microsoft 365. This next step in Cortana’s evolution will bring enhanced, seamless personal productivity assistance as a free update to the latest version of Windows 10 coming this spring.

Through this updated Cortana experience, we will roll out new Cortana services delivered through Microsoft 365 backed by the privacy, security and compliance promises of Office 365 services as set out in the Online Services Terms. Protecting your data and privacy is our highest priority, and we give you control over your data.

Cortana’s new capabilities help you achieve more with less effort

The upcoming update to Windows 10 will include access to a new Cortana experience with an emphasis on productivity, helping you quickly find the information you want across Microsoft 365. The new Cortana experience in Windows 10 features a chat-based UI that gives you the ability to interact with Cortana using your voice or the keyboard.

For English (United States) users, Cortana will assist you in better managing your schedule and tasks by staying on top of your calendar and focusing on what matters with meeting insights. You can speak or type requests to find people or files, or quickly create or query emails. You can also easily check your calendar, set a reminder, or add to your lists in Microsoft To Do:

“What’s next on my calendar?”

“Remind me to send the ‘weekly report’ every Friday at 2pm.”

“Add ‘status report’ to my task list.”

And Cortana will continue to help you get answers from Bing, set alarms and timers, open apps, adjust settings, or give you a joke you can share with colleagues, friends or family.

Outside of the United States, the initial release of the Cortana experience in Windows 10 will include answers from Bing and the ability to chat with Cortana. We plan to enhance our international experience with more productivity-based capabilities in the future.

Additional changes for Cortana

As part of Cortana’s evolution into a personal productivity assistant in Microsoft 365, you’ll see some changes in how Cortana works in the latest version of Windows 10. We’ve tightened access to Cortana so that you must be securely logged in with your work or school account or your Microsoft account before using Cortana, and some consumer skills including music, connected home and third-party skills will no longer be available in the updated Cortana experience in Windows 10. We’re also making some changes to where Cortana helps you. As part of our standard practice, we are ending support for Cortana in older versions of Windows that have reached their end-of-service dates. We recommend that customers update their devices to the latest version of Windows 10 to continue using Cortana. We’ll also be turning off the Cortana services in the Microsoft Launcher on Android by the end of April.

We’re excited about how these updates to Cortana will help you stay on top of things, save time and do your best work. As we continue to innovate on Cortana in Microsoft 365, we plan to share further improvements in the coming months.

Source: Cortana in the upcoming Windows 10 release: focused on your productivity with enhanced security and privacy | Windows Experience Blog

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Posted By: Brink
28 Feb 2020