Cortana News (Coming from the inside) (OP being updated)

[Talderon]

Hey all, I am still here, just eyeball deep in work. I have some more news that I will be posting when give the OK.

Talk to you all soon!

 

[teemulehtinen]

In the natural language query thread I complained about Cortana not reading the emails regarding flights.

Now it did on her own: an email containing flight confirmation for two relatives was sent to me on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday evening Cortana, when opening the service, asked if I wanted her to keep track on the relevant flights. I answered yes, of course. However, these are not in the calendar. I wonder if they will be - or does the tracking just simply mean they are tracked?

I think it would be useful for the tracked flight information to be included in the default calendar with announced flight times too. At least this should be optional. Same goes of course for train and bus travel.

All in all, think of Cortana overtaking automatically without any action from my side the kind of service that I now use TripIt for simply by checking my emails.

 

[lsmachado]

Hey all, I am still here, just eyeball deep in work. I have some more news that I will be posting when give the OK.

Talk to you all soon!

Thanks for keeping us all updated!

 

[mozman68]

In the natural language query thread I complained about Cortana not reading the emails regarding flights.

Now it did on her own: an email containing flight confirmation for two relatives was sent to me on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday evening Cortana, when opening the service, asked if I wanted her to keep track on the relevant flights. I answered yes, of course. However, these are not in the calendar. I wonder if they will be - or does the tracking just simply mean they are tracked?

I think it would be useful for the tracked flight information to be included in the default calendar with announced flight times too. At least this should be optional. Same goes of course for train and bus travel.

All in all, think of Cortana overtaking automatically without any action from my side the kind of service that I now use TripIt for simply by checking my emails.

I disagree....having it "tracked" in Cortana is enough. Do you have a Cortana tile pinned to the home screen? It will show the info when relevant and a simple tap gives you the info usually at the top of the feed.

I also don't want Cortana adding stuff to my default calendar as that is not my personal one....now, if there was an option when you select it to track to add to a particular calendar if you wanted? Maybe.

 

[ven07]

In the natural language query thread I complained about Cortana not reading the emails regarding flights.

Now it did on her own: an email containing flight confirmation for two relatives was sent to me on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday evening Cortana, when opening the service, asked if I wanted her to keep track on the relevant flights. I answered yes, of course. However, these are not in the calendar. I wonder if they will be - or does the tracking just simply mean they are tracked?

I think it would be useful for the tracked flight information to be included in the default calendar with announced flight times too. At least this should be optional. Same goes of course for train and bus travel.

All in all, think of Cortana overtaking automatically without any action from my side the kind of service that I now use TripIt for simply by checking my emails.

Again this reaffirms my believe that MS is silently pushing minor updates... Cortana's power is in the cloud so basically we don't see anything.. This makes it possible for MS to push minor updates without us knowing lol

 

[vitor.rf]

Again this reaffirms my believe that MS is silently pushing minor updates... Cortana's power is in the cloud so basically we don't see anything.. This makes it possible for MS to push minor updates without us knowing lol

This is true and it happens on a weekly base, so I heard.

Regarding tracking flights, I haven't tried it out yet, but i'm almost sure she'll update you about the flight status, delayed, departure, arrival, etc

 

[anon(7901790)]

A few different questions/remarks that hopefully you can address:

1. Geofencing - my experience has been that geofencing works when (and only when) the "address" matches the GPS location exactly. When I put in my home and work addresses manually, I didn't get any notifications. When I asked "where am I" and used that location as each (even though the unit numbers were way off, e.g. my apartment is 300X and it says 500X) it works. The problem seems to be a great margin of error in Windows Phone maps. So far, I have never been able to trigger a notification at an unsaved location. If I say "remind me at Wegmans" it finds the correct Wegmans, but when I am actually there, maps show me in Kohl's, which is in the same plaza. Is this a problem that Microsoft is aware of? Is there a plan in place to fix it? It seems like the core mechanics are working perfectly (e.g. it finds the place you are looking for every time) but the mapping is the problem. For what it's worth, I live in NJ, about 45 minutes outside of NYC/Philly.

I found through experimentation that Geofencing only automatically turns on Wi-Fi if the favorite is labeled as home or work. For the other "bad" locations. The Geofencing is only as good as the mapping data being used. I've had this issue with Google Maps as well, it's not unique to Nokia's map data (which is what Cortana, Here Maps, Microsoft Maps, and Here+ Drive uses). I live in Pearl City, HI and I've generally have had no issues, but every so often I can't completely rely on the maps. For example, the entire island of Oahu, addresses are all showing Honolulu. When in fact there are several cities and towns on the island. There are other issues, mostly with how addresses are done is many (but not all) places. For example, the address will be 98-12345 Farrington Hwy, Waipahu, HI. Here Maps and Microsoft Maps don't like the dash and drops the number before the dash and look for 12345 Farrington Hwy. Since it can't find that address, it just goes to the head of the street.

 

[AR2186]

Here's an idea for location based reminders: Allow Cortana to understand the right location when I say something like "remind me to pick up my medicine from the Duane Reade near work." I just tried to tell her and she kept alternating between asking where I wanted to be reminded (to which I responded "the Duane Reade near work")) and she would then ask me what she should remind me.

I know this would involve having here understand that she needs to look for Duane Reade's near my office, but I was under the impression this was the sort of contextual awareness Cortana specialized in.

I may have been doing something won't but for the life of me i couldn't get it to work.

 

[Ploydd]

I've actually had decent luck with wi-fi and the geofencing. I've had to change the addresses in my Places section to match Maps, but if I turn off the wi-fi and set it to turn back on near favorite places it works great. Turns on at work, near my home, at my mom's, and at my best friend's house. I played around with the new voicing last night that Cortana is using as well and wow! My wife and I were shocked at the differences between now and before they released the preview. I love the work they're doing and hope they continue to keep it up and make it better and better.

 

[anon(7901790)]

I've actually had decent luck with wi-fi and the geofencing. I've had to change the addresses in my Places section to match Maps, but if I turn off the wi-fi and set it to turn back on near favorite places it works great. Turns on at work, near my home, at my mom's, and at my best friend's house. I played around with the new voicing last night that Cortana is using as well and wow! My wife and I were shocked at the differences between now and before they released the preview. I love the work they're doing and hope they continue to keep it up and make it better and better.

How did you add your favorite places that are not labeled as work or home? I just did a hard reset since my last experiment. Maybe I should try again with favorites labeled as other.

 

[Novron]

Pin Cortana, select the tile. In the upper right, hit the three bars. Select "Places" then add as many favorite places as you like.

 

[Ploydd]

You have to actually mark them in Maps as favorites. I wish you could add them as favorites directly from the Cortana places menu but meh, its a little thing.
Edit: I should clarify, you can do that inside the Cortana menu but with the inconsistency in addresses on Maps, it's difficult for use with Wi-Fi.

If you're just trying to mark a place.. Very easy to do. Especially with restaurants and other mainstays.

 

[smoledman]

Will Microsoft bring the ability to swipe away individual Action Center items like you can do in Google Now? Also it might help to put some kind of a border around them...

 

[1oldtimer]

Talderon,
I would just like to say that after reading from the beggining, Thank you for all your time and effort to keep us informed. Very Much Appreciated!

 

[ven07]

@Talderon please tell me you'll have some free time to post some news (any news at all) here for us :evil:
I think 8.1 is becoming an obsession rly:

 

[ven07]

Will Microsoft bring the ability to swipe away individual Action Center items like you can do in Google Now? Also it might help to put some kind of a border around them...

Yes MS did confirm that we will receive borders :smile: Actually I think Belfiore confirmed this during his reddit interview

 

[ven07]

How did you add your favorite places that are not labeled as work or home? I just did a hard reset since my last experiment. Maybe I should try again with favorites labeled as other.

There are a few ways to achieve this.. My method is going to the place you would like to add as a favorite.. Ask her "where am I?" when she replies with the miniature view of the map, tap on it to enlarge, if the pointer is exactly where you want it to be then simply tap and hold :smile: The rest is pretty simple

 

[anon(7901790)]

Pin Cortana, select the tile. In the upper right, hit the three bars. Select "Places" then add as many favorite places as you like.

Thanks. I've been using Microsoft Maps. Maybe that was the problem. I'll give it a try.

 

[anon(7901790)]

You have to actually mark them in Maps as favorites. I wish you could add them as favorites directly from the Cortana places menu but meh, its a little thing.
Edit: I should clarify, you can do that inside the Cortana menu but with the inconsistency in addresses on Maps, it's difficult for use with Wi-Fi.

If you're just trying to mark a place.. Very easy to do. Especially with restaurants and other mainstays.

That is how I was doing it before and that was when I found out that it worked if labeled as work or home. I stood inside my favorite Starbucks, opened Maps and made my current location a favorite. I also connected to the Wi-Fi in that restaurant to make sure my phone recognized it. The favorite was marked as other and when I went back later that day, my Wi-Fi didn't turn on. It wasn't until I set that Starbucks as work, did I get it to work. Which brings me to my next point.

Those of you who are having success with Geofencing (at least as far as Wi-Fi turning on automatically), what kind of phone are you using. I am using a Lumia Icon on VZW in Hawaii (Oahu). Now that I've seen others who've had success with it, I am wondering why I am not. Is it WP8.1, is it my phone, is it my carrier, is it my location, or is it any combination of these factors? Right now, I've only had success with favorites marked as work and home.

I will try again today. I added a restaurant to my favorites using Cortana and when we leave, I will turn my Wi-Fi off, with it set to turn on near my favorites.

And right now, I could care less if there is Wi-Fi in those places. I just want it to turn Wi-Fi on automatically when I get near a favorite marked as other; just to see it work.


Edit - When I got to the restaurant, Wi-Fi didn't turn on. Since the location was in Waikiki, the map location according to Microsoft Maps was accurate. So I still think that (at least for me) it only works if it set to home or work.

 

[smoledman]

Nice to see MS finally listening to consumers. It's like Ballmer's exit has liberated things.