Ideas to improve Cortana

[bills pies]

After playing with Cortana for a few days excessively, I've seen her potential as a digital assistant. When I went away to Edinburgh for the day, she was incredible at helping me find out the things that I asked it to find out and do. No doubt about it that even in Beta, Cortana is awesome.

Having said that, she is not perfect just yet. Leaving the BETA tag aside, what do you think the Cortana Dev team should do to improve her as a digital assistant?

I've come up with one, which I call Cortana Threads.
Cortana threads would be like a conversation between you and her, and the reason why I think these would be a good idea is because sometimes when I ask Cortana a follow up question, she goes off-topic, and I have to start again.

Imagine the following Scenario:
- I want to go to London with my Dad this weekend.
- I want to know how long it will take to drive there, and the weather.

Using Cortana Threads, the conversation could look like this
- Cortana, How long does it take to drive to London
- It will take 4 hours and 4 minutes to drive to London. It's about 210 miles away.
- What'll the weather be like there this weekend?
- This weekend it is expected to be 15 degrees and sunny in London
- Great. Find me a hotel in the city centre for Saturday night
- I found four 4 star hotels in London City centre
- Call the second one
- Ok, calling....

As this is only a concept, it may look like most of this can already be done currently, but with Cortana Threads, everything within the thread would be relevant to the initial query, like a conversation with a real personal assistant would be. You would also be able to read everything that had been said within the thread, sort of like how Cleverbot works

Do you have any more ideas on how Microsoft could improve Cortana?

 

[MARKjotep]

you have a very good point.
Even Cortana is currently in Beta, she can do most of the task you ask her to do.

It should look like a conversation thread. where in all question will be in one thread so you don't have to specify what your subject is all about,(so she can rely on it e.g. the country).
Im sure devs are thinking the same Idea as what you have and doing their best to apply this into the next update!


She's still in early development and cortana is showing her potential. Once 8.1 is out to all WP8 owners, lots of them will be happy.

looking forward!

<3 cortana

 

[DaT Franchise]

I'd like to see an active mode and passive mode. More voice interaction like reading out loud the at a glance, like in the morning giving a daily briefing. Voice reminders not just a toast. Ability to learn habits like I turn my Wi-Fi off every day when I leave for work, instead of her reminding me she learns and does it automatically.

Another example would be if you have a thermostat that you can control from your phone, you walk in your house she greets you home and asks if you want the heat up, ac down or whatever

 

[MARKjotep]

I'd like to see an active mode and passive mode. More voice interaction like reading out loud the at a glance, like in the morning giving a daily briefing. Voice reminders not just a toast. Ability to learn habits like I turn my Wi-Fi off every day when I leave for work, instead of her reminding me she learns and does it automatically.

Another example would be if you have a thermostat that you can control from your phone, you walk in your house she greets you home and asks if you want the heat up, ac down or whatever

haha.. Isn't it kinda futuristic??
hopefully after 2 years. That how Cortana will work! :sweaty:

 

[DaT Franchise]

haha.. Isn't it kinda futuristic??
hopefully after 2 years. That how Cortana will work! :sweaty:

How is that too futuristic? There are apps on the store now that will read out loud similar. She can geo fence now so instead of reminding me to turn WiFi on or off, notifications on or off just do it. There's quite a few WiFi or Bluetooth thermostats and door locks out there now with Android\ios apps too, it wouldn't take much to tie the two together. I actually have one of those thermostats, its pretty cool, I dont have to get up and walk upstairs to do anything to it.

 

[4 fun]

Can anyone tell if you would like Cortana to be listening right from the first time you press search to opening, and not to wait to press the mic button? I would love to...

 

[SpaceyO]

Can anyone tell if you would like Cortana to be listening right from the first time you press search to opening, and not to wait to press the mic button? I would love to...

Long press the search button...she opens up in listening mode.

 

[ajb1965]

It would be nice if Cortana notifications could be given a separate sound. Geofencing and reminder alarms get lost on me because they sound like my zillion other calendar reminders. A distinct tone would differentiate them.

 

[wump]

If u hold the search button for a second it will start up in mic mode

 

[JaiMento]

It would be nice if Cortana notifications could be given a separate sound. Geofencing and reminder alarms get lost on me because they sound like my zillion other calendar reminders. A distinct tone would differentiate them.

I told Cortana to give me score updates for my favorite teams. After it sent me the first notification, "search" now shows up in my notifications+actions settings, allowing me to set a custom tone. Not sure if it that is for all Cortana notifications or for Cortana at all, but I'm not sure what else it could be for.

Edit: So I just did a quick test. I told Cortana to remind to check the laundry in 2 minutes. When the notification came through, it indeed used the sound "alert 7", which is the sound I chose for "search" notifications.

 

[ajb1965]

I told Cortana to give me score updates for my favorite teams. After it sent me the first notification, "search" now shows up in my notifications+actions settings, allowing me to set a custom tone. Not sure if it that is for all Cortana notifications or for Cortana at all, but I'm not sure what else it could be for.

Edit: So I just did a quick test. I told Cortana to remind to check the laundry in 2 minutes. When the notification came through, it indeed used the sound "alert 7", which is the sound I chose for "search" notifications.

Hmm that didn't trigger search showing up in notifications and action settings. If it works for you then it must be something I'm doing wrong lol. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Joe920]

"Cortana, use Google for web searches from now on." Pretty please?

 

[JaiMento]

Hmm that didn't trigger search showing up in notifications and action settings. If it works for you then it must be something I'm doing wrong lol. Thanks for the tip!

Did you try setting your favorite teams in Cortana's notebook and checking that you wanted updates to their scores? And then actually get a notification for a score update?

 

[osoalex]

• Cortana to be able to send emails.
• Cortana to be in Spanish and other languages. Or at least to not have the need to change the whole system's language in order to use it.
• Cortana to use HERE Maps instead of Bing ones (HERE has much more information about my country, for example).
• Better context recognition, eg: "Make this alarm" and then "Cancel it". "Who's Barack Obama", then "How tall is he?"
• Cortana to be integrated with Rotten Tomatoes and so on to ask her about movies, and why not, with IGN and ask her about videogames and their scores aswell.
• Back and forth conversations with Cortana (chit chat).

 

[tnadera]

First she needs to know, my job
if she is a good personal assistant, she has to know what do i do for living, in order to help me more with it.
second I want her to speak more, not just banners or pop up reminder without speaking.
Also she doesn't use my name at all in speaking (although there is an option for that in the settings)
​

 

[renjith p george]

This will be little futuristic. As of now , we have an option to ask cortana to remind us in certainthings. Once the reminder time arrives, cortana will display it as pop up in the screen, like calendar updates. Imagine, if cortana can arrange an internal call to you?

 

[tnadera]

Also it will be great to know more about my friends in the inner circle, one of my friends in the inner circle, his birthday was yesterday; it would have been great if she noticed it and did anything or even reminded me in a special way

 

[ajb1965]

Did you try setting your favorite teams in Cortana's notebook and checking that you wanted updates to their scores? And then actually get a notification for a score update?

That worked! That's good info sir, thank you much!!

 

[Talderon]

After playing with Cortana for a few days excessively, I've seen her potential as a digital assistant. When I went away to Edinburgh for the day, she was incredible at helping me find out the things that I asked it to find out and do. No doubt about it that even in Beta, Cortana is awesome.

Having said that, she is not perfect just yet. Leaving the BETA tag aside, what do you think the Cortana Dev team should do to improve her as a digital assistant?

I've come up with one, which I call Cortana Threads.
Cortana threads would be like a conversation between you and her, and the reason why I think these would be a good idea is because sometimes when I ask Cortana a follow up question, she goes off-topic, and I have to start again.

Imagine the following Scenario:
- I want to go to London with my Dad this weekend.
- I want to know how long it will take to drive there, and the weather.

Using Cortana Threads, the conversation could look like this
- Cortana, How long does it take to drive to London
- It will take 4 hours and 4 minutes to drive to London. It's about 210 miles away.
- What'll the weather be like there this weekend?
- This weekend it is expected to be 15 degrees and sunny in London
- Great. Find me a hotel in the city centre for Saturday night
- I found four 4 star hotels in London City centre
- Call the second one
- Ok, calling....

As this is only a concept, it may look like most of this can already be done currently, but with Cortana Threads, everything within the thread would be relevant to the initial query, like a conversation with a real personal assistant would be. You would also be able to read everything that had been said within the thread, sort of like how Cleverbot works

Do you have any more ideas on how Microsoft could improve Cortana?

Scenarios like this are being worked on. There is just a LOT of back-end work that is needed to get it to this point. It's in progress, but, as you can imagine, with getting additional regions up and running, fixing bugs and prioritizing features and so forth, it's not going to be lightning fast, but it IS on the way.

 

[JaiMento]

That worked! That's good info sir, thank you much!!

NP. Glad you got it working for you.