Cortana Natural Language Queries - Feedback (Will go to Dev Team)

[Reebs Reebs]

Exact Phrase Spoken: find a pizzeria on my way home
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: Cortana planning my route, and finding a pizza place on my way
Actual Results: Cortana lists the closest 10 pizzerias around me.
Feedback: Currently, user will have to do the planning to find which of the returned results are on the way. Eventually, Cortana should do that. She has all the info. Also, I think the feature of flagging locations that are actually on the way home without me asking is pretty useful even when simply asking her to find me a pizzeria or gas station and so on.

 

[James8561]

Region/Language: USA English
Exact phrase spoken: What's the current battery status?
Did Cortana parse this correctly? Yes
Expected result: Cortana reads battery percentage and time remaining
Actual result: Bing search
Feedback: I just want the battery level read aloud.

Exact phrase spoken: Lock screen rotation ; lock screen orientation ; turn on screen rotation
Did Cortana parse these correctly? Yes
Expected result: Screen rotation is turned off or on
Actual result: Bing search
Feedback: Add the ability to turn on and off screen rotation by voice.

 

[anon(8657436)]

Region/Language: US English
Exact Phrase Spoken: Move my next reminder by 30 minutes
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: She would postpone my REMINDER by 30 mins
Actual Results: I'm sorry I can't change reminders. But you can tap it to change whatever you like.
And she gave me the next reminder below with brief info.
Feedback: She should be able to move reminders and edit basic info.

 

[ajayden]

Region/Language: USA/English (But I'm from Brazil)
Exact Phrase Spoken: Cancel My appointments for tomorrow
Did Cortana parse this correctly: Yes.
Expected Results: She cancelling the appointments on calendar, plus showing a list of them. Would be even nicer if she wished a nice day-off or something.
Actual Results: She just shows the appointments
Feedback: It would be nicer if Cortana could have a greater control and understading of appointments

Region/Language: USA/English (But I'm from Brazil)
Exact Phrase Spoken: Call my aunt
Did Cortana parse this correctly: Yes.
Expected Results: Call my aunt, which is in inner circle AND has her nickname set as "Aunt"
Actual Results: She asks who I want to call
Feedback: She gets my mom, my brother, but not my aunt, I can't imagine why. PLUS, one of the things I REALLY aprecciate about her, is that we can use Cortana with headphones, when she is in a bag/purse/pocket, so just showing things on screen is useless, she needs to read the information aloud. Sometimes she reads/parses contacts' name so wrong I can't help but to repeat until she gets it right.

Region/Language: USA/English (But I'm from Brazil)
Exact Phrase Spoken: Turn Quiet Hours On, Quiet hours on, Turn quiet hours on for the next hour, Cortana, turn quiet hours on
Did Cortana parse this correctly: 80% of the time
Expected Results: Actual command
Actual Results: Bing searches. Bing searches everywhere. Even with the last one.
Feedback: It should just work, it's a Cortana feature that doesn't work with Cortana. And I'm really shocked she Bing'd herself

Region/Language: USA/English (But I'm from Brazil)
Exact Phrase Spoken: Turn Quiet Hours On, Quiet hours on, Turn quiet hours on for the next hour, Cortana, turn quiet hours on
Did Cortana parse this correctly: 80% of the time
Expected Results: Actual command
Actual Results: Bing searches. Bing searches everywhere. Even with the last one.
Feedback: It should just work, it's a Cortana feature that doesn't work with Cortana. And I'm really shocked she Bing'd herself

Region/Language: USA/English (But I'm from Brazil)
Exact Phrase Spoken: Turn NFC/Cellular data on/off
Did Cortana parse this correctly: Offline, she doesn't show, so I don't know
Expected Results: Actual command
Actual Results: Online, Bing searches. Offline, "I can't connect" answers
Feedback: It should just work. Works perfectly with wi-fi and bluetooth.

The phrase for quiet hours should be "switch on quiet hours"

 

[wally1975]

Region/Language: US/English
Exact Phrase Spoken: Drive/Navigate to 450 Gilman Street Berkley California
Did Cortana parse this correctly: Yes
Expected Results: Open Here Drive+ with the address given set as the destination
Actual Results: Here Drive+ opened with Berkley, Ca city center set as the destination
Feedback: I tried this with multiple address and city combinations and Cortana always navigated to the city center

 

[iyae]

This one was frustrating

Region/Language: USA English
Exact phrase spoken: Im Hungry
Did Cortana parse this correctly? Yes
Expected:Show me restaurants
Actual result: Bing Search

Region/Language: USA English
Exact phrase spoken: I want to eat
Did Cortana parse this correctly? Yes
Expected:Show me restaurants
Actual result: Showed me 10 restaurants

Region/Language: USA English
Exact phrase spoken: Show me where I can get pizza
Did Cortana parse this correctly? Yes
Expected and Actual result: Showed me some places nearby where I can eat pizza (including 4 dominos joints)
FOLLOWING ON
Exact phrase spoken: I don't like dominos
Did Cortana parse this correctly? Yes
Expected: To remove the dominos pizza places from the search
Actual: "Here are 4 locations for dominoes"
Feedback: Cortana should understand this and narrow my search.Seems like she just picked up "dominos" and ignored the "I do not like" part
FOLLOWING ON
Exact phrase spoken: Show me some other pizza places
Did Cortana parse this correctly? Yes
Expected: To show me some pizza places other than dominos in my area.
Actual: "Here are 4 locations for dominoes"
Feedback: She is just repeating herself now. Why couldn't she work out I wanted to see some other pizza places? Seems there is some work to be done on this aspect of continued conversational requests.

 

[Aaron Stark]

Region/Language: United States(US) but living in Germany / English(US)
Exact Phrase Spoken: Navigate me to my grandparents
Did Cortana part this correctly: Yes (navigate me to my grandparents)
Expected Results: Open's up HERE Drive and brings me to my grandparents
Actual Results: Does a Bing search
Feedback:

• The place grandparents is in the list of the places
• Navigation works with the exact phrase if i say "navigate me to my home" or "navigate me to my school"
• Needs to navigate me everywhere where I want

Well they must've fixed that, it works on my phone when I ask Cortana to give me directions to my grandparents.

 

[Joe920]

Region/Language: US/US
Exact Phrase Spoken: Is Best Buy open on Easter Sunday / Is Best Buy open today
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: she'd tell me whether BB is open, or at least link me to a page with store hours.
Actual Results: "Here are 10 Best Buy's near you"
Feedback: Questions on store hours are the perfect 'on-the-go' type questions. If the data is available it would be great to have this available via Cortana.

 

[Joe920]

Region/Language: US/US
Exact Phrase Spoken: Call the Microsoft Store
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: give me the option to dial a local MS Store, or the general store number
Actual Results: "Sure, who would you like to call?" (me: "the Microsoft Store") "I couldn't find that contact."
Feedback: It would make sense to have Cortana recognize store names and dial customer service, even if not in the address book.

 

[Joe920]

I can't quite put this in the requested format, so delete if not appropriate for this thread.

When Cortana doesn't understand some words, it's nice that we can tap the misunderstood word and tap a replacement from the suggestions above the keyboard. Unfortunately it looks like the offered replacements are from the standard word prediction / spell checker, which doesn't make sense since Cortana doesn't really make typos. It would make more sense if the suggested replacements would be phonetically similar to what Cortana heard.

If implemented that could also help with voice training, since it would clarify what the user said.

 

[ajayden]

Region/Language: US/US
Exact Phrase Spoken: Call the Microsoft Store
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: give me the option to dial a local MS Store, or the general store number
Actual Results: "Sure, who would you like to call?" (me: "the Microsoft Store") "I couldn't find that contact."
Feedback: It would make sense to have Cortana recognize store names and dial customer service, even if not in the address book.

Region/Language: US/US
[COLOR333333]Exact Phrase Spoken: Locate the nearest Microsoft Store[/COLOR]
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: give me the location of nearest Microsoft Store with phone number and directions below
Actual Results: gives me the location of nearest Microsoft Store with phone number and directions below
[COLOR333333]Exact Phrase Spoken: Call there[/COLOR]
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: Calls the store with the displayed number
Actual Results: Calls the store with the displayed number

This was how it worked for me.

[/COLOR]

 

[QuincyMitchell]

Region/Language: usa/english
Exact Phrase Spoken: "drive to {contact}"
Did Cortana parse this correctly: No.
Expected Results: Open default voice navigation app to the address for a contact.
Actual Results: Opens a web search.

 

[JudaZuk]

Region/Language: United States, Swedish (Sweden) / English (United States)
Exact Phrase Spoken: Turn off quiet hours for the rest of the day
Did Cortana parse this correctly: Yes
Expected Results: Cortana to turn off quiet hours for the rest of the day
Actual Results: Cortana asked me "Turn off the alarm for what time?"
Feedback: I have quiet hours set for the hours when I'm at work, since I cant answer the phone then.
However sometimes there is a holiday, or you are home sick and you want to turn off quiet hours then. Now you manually have to go through several steps to do that.
Would be great if cortana could turn it off Quiet hours for me for a set period of time. (since quiet hours is connected to Cortana anyways)

 

[JudaZuk]

Region/Language: United States, Swedish (Sweden) / English (United States)
Exact Phrase Spoken: Change the default sound for alarms
Did Cortana parse this correctly: Yes
Expected Results: Give me a choice to change the default alarm sound.
Actual Results: Cortana asked me "Set your alarm for what time?"
Feedback: The default sound that comes as standard in Windows Phone is in my opinion is not a good alarm sound, and way to soft to wake anyone up.
Cortana usually works great to set alarms, but for every alarm I set I need to manually go in and change the alarm sound , because I will not hear the alarm otherwise, making the alarm function, and the fact that Cortana actually adds them really good 95% of the times, of no use.
The alarm is set, but I will not hear it , so I might as well not set an alarm at all
and if i manually need to change the sound every time , for every alarm, I might as well add the alarm manually to begin with
And i dont want to do that because I'm lazy

 

[Matthew Thepc]

EDIT: all are region USA/English

Exact Phrase Spoken: Send an email to John saying I'll be late
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: Cortana sends an email to John saying "I'll be late"
Actual Results: Cortana searches for "send an email to John saying I'll be late"
Feedback: You can't seem to send an email with Cortana, which is something that would be nice to do. Same with Facebook chat.

Exact Phrase Spoken: Tell me a joke
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: Cortana tells me a joke
Actual Results: Cortana attempts to send a text message to my contact with the name "Me"
Feedback: I know having a contact called "Me" is a little weird, but Cortana should be able to understand that 99% of the time "Tell me a joke" means to tell a joke, not send a text.


Exact Phrase Spoken: Get directions to Will's house
Did Cortana parse this correctly: mostly (it read "Will's" as "Wills", but other than that it was fine)
Expected Results: Cortana looks through my address book for Will, then takes the address I have for him in the address book and gets directions to it
Actual Results: Cortana searches for "Get directions to Will's house"
Feedback: It works fine if I add "Wills house" to my saved places, but if Cortana already has an address for Will, why do I need to add a hundred addresses to Cortana separately? There should be some way to allow her to access my address book.

Exact Phrase Spoken: "How about Apple?" after "How's Microsoft's stock price?"
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: Cortana shows the current Apple stock price
Actual Results: Cortana searches for "How about Apple"
Feedback: If you're already in one of the contextual areas that Cortana knows how to handle (like stocks, searching for places, etc.) and say "How about X," it should remember the last query you made (in this case "How's Microsoft's stock price") and re-query that for X.

Exact Phrase Spoken: "Find a library"
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: Cortana shows a nearby library
Actual Results: Cortana searches for "find a library"
Feedback: This works sometimes for me, but other times it just makes a search. Kind of weird, it should always find a nearby library.


Exact Phrase Spoken: "Find a Starbucks near me"
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: Cortana shows a nearby Starbucks
Actual Results: Cortana searches for "find a Starbucks near me"
Feedback: This has never worked for me, even though it's listed as one of the example commands No amount of rephrasing seems to locate a starbucks, it always searches.

Exact Phrase Spoken: "Set an alarm for tomorrow morning"
Did Cortana parse this correctly: yes
Expected Results: Cortana asks me when I'd like my alarm
Actual Results: Cortana shows me a list of existing alarms and asks which I'd like to turn on
Feedback: I'd prefer Cortana let me tell it when to set the alarm, instead of giving me a choice from my previously set alarms. Also, I'd suggest re-doing Alarms, the current app doesn't do it justice (you can't set a recurring alarm, alarms are left over in the alarms app instead of being removed when they're finished, etc.).

On a non-natural-language-related note, if the alerts (like Calendar notifications, Cortana reminders, and alarms) toasts/notification boxes could be standardized it would make it a lot cleaner, right now they all look like they were developed separately (which I guess they were, but having a single look would be nicer). In addition, being able to re-organize the "what's new" page would be nice, Global News is always at the top for me, even if I'd prefer Science and Tech to be above it.

Also, none of my custom-added news things seem to be showing up, for example I added "microsoft" as a news thing to watch under my Interests, but I never see it in my what's new page. Oh, and integrating social information would be neat too on that page, like the latest Facebook posts or Twitter tweets. Overall more customization would be nice.


Overall it's a great start, can't wait to see where it goes from here

 

[zikifer]

Region/Language: United States/en-US
Exact Phrase Spoken: "when is my next Dr. Jones appointment?"
Did Cortana parse this correctly: Yes
Expected Results: Search my calendar to find the next appointment with the subject "Dr. Jones" or "Dr. Jones Appointment"
Actual Results: It simply showed me my next appointment.
Feedback: What's interesting is that when I searched for "when is my next Dr. Dan appointment" it successfully found it and told me. But it couldn't find Dr. Jones, even though I had an appointment in two days with the subject "Dr. Jones Appointment". Both appointments were on my main calendar; the Dr. Jones appointment was in 2 days and the Dr. Dan appointment was in 10 days.
There is a chance the Dr. Jones appointment was a reschedule of an earlier appointment - he's my chiropractor and I see him regularly (and yes, his name is Dr. Jones). So often what I do is simply find the old appointment in my calendar and change the date/time to the new date and time (since there's no Copy Appointment functionality - not even in the web interface, which is annoying). Did that screw it up, since the appointment was originally created long ago?
Also, voice searching doesn't seem to work for appointments that are not on my main calendar - searching for an appointment I knew was on my work calendar always simply gave the next appointment on my calendar. However, most of my work calendar is reoccurring meetings, so maybe there's an issue with those?

 

[James8561]

Region/Language: US English
Exact phrase spoken: What do you like to do in your free time?
Did Cortana parse this correctly? Yes
Expected result: Witty response
Actual result: Bing search
Feedback: This is one more chit chat situation to implement

Exact phrase spoken: Go to att.com
Did Cortana parse this correctly? Yes
Expected result: Cortana opens up an IE tab and load up att.com
Actual result: Bing search
Feedback: Cortana needs to be able to open websites directly. Maybe try making her listening to the ".com ; .org ; .net ;etc." Also, Cortana should be able to know the titles of browser bookmarks and able to open bookmarked pages from just hearing the title

 

[vrokolos]

Region/Language: US/English
Exact Phrase Spoken: Disable all my alarms
Did Cortana part this correctly: No
Expected Results: Disable all alarms
Actual Results: Asking for single alarm to disable
Feedback: N/A

 

[NO CARRIER]

Region/Language: US English
Exact Phrase Spoken: What is the score of the Toronto Blue Jays?
Did Cortana parse this correctly: Yes
Expected Results: Toronto Blue Jays are sqeaking past Team X 3 to 2 in the 4th inning.
Actual Results: Toronto Blue Jays are sqeaking past Team X 3 to 2 in the 4th quarter.
Feedback: Cortana mis-spoke the 4th inning as the 4th quarter. She's using football terminology.

 

[Roman Royter]

Some more feedback. I learned about a new episode of Blacklist coming out tomorrow while I was at a small plaza. So I wanted to setup a reminder to watch it when I get home tomorrow.

Region/Language: US English
Exact Phrase Spoken: When I get home tomorrow, remind me to watch Blacklist.
Did Cortana parse this correctly: Yes
Expected Results: Set a reminder for tomorrow AND home
Actual Results: She set a reminder only for when I get home.
Feedback: So after I got home the same day, she of course, "reminded" me to watch blacklist. Which is not what I asked for. She should have picked up the "tomorrow" part.

Also, Cortana has difficulties recognizing foreign names transliterated in Latin. This, again, goes back to my previous comment of lack of multilingual support in Windows Phone as a whole. I shouldn't have to rewrite people's names in Latin letters, and then still have issues calling/texting them by name. Names like Kolya, Masha, Yulya, Gulya, should be recognized in their native form: Коля, Маша, Юля, Гуля. I should be able to say "Call Маша", or "When I talk to Коля, remind me to...".