Ideas to improve Cortana

[Achike Da]

I think those are very good suggestions. I'd like to add one more. She seems to have a problem with local movie listings. Asking here to pull up current movies playing at the theater is quite difficult. Tying it with its rotten tomatoes reviews are a good idea too.

 

[WesleyBPeres]

Hability to use her IN apps. EIt could be like this:

When you long press back, in the multitask screen she could be there and you can drag her to an app. EX: Drag her to the "Translator", and ask to copy the text and send an email with the text pasted.

 

[ajb1965]

What about the ability to tie in geofencing and apps? For instance, "next time I am at WalMart open Onenote notebook Grocery list".

 

[afnan_mc]

Cortana, check for new mail.
Cortana, update WPCentral, Magnify and Nextgen reader.
Cortana, check for updates. (phone and the store)
Just a few stuff I'd appreciate.

Also, as OP said, those features would be awesome. Extend it to the chit-chat stuff, like I ask her whether she likes Steve Ballmer and she replies being her witty self after which I ask her how old is he or what not, that'd be perfect. (sorta like Google Now)

 

[gphoneone]

The ability to schedule texts - send text to Fred in 2 hours time.

Ability to play selected music - play me some classical music.

Conditional texts - if I don't receive a text from Fred today send him the following message.

 

[draco76x]

Just wonder, can "Cortana" be called up without touching the phone physically??

Example, by using the front facing camera, with a wave of hand over the front camera (something like in Glance setting using the "Peek" function) & "Cortana" is on & respond "Master Chief, anything I can help".

This will be great that if Microsoft can enhance the usage of the front facing camera with Cortana.

 

[afnan_mc]

These are great additions too.
50 Siri Voice Commands - YouTube

 

[Joe920]

I was enjoying Cortana's info today while traveling. Couple of points of feedback though:

I see that on the Cortana page she can display flight info with gate information and flight status based on info parsed from my reservation emails. For some reason that info is not always accessible. Often tapping the airplane icon will take me to IE and show me flightstats.com or similar (don't recall). It would be nice if the compact flight view with gate info was shown the moment it is available, or if tapping the airplane icon expands to show any available info.

Second, the info is great, but once you're in the air and there's no wifi, the info is no longer available. Too bad, because I wanted to see when my flight was supposed to arrive. Ideally Cortana would show an estimate of flight progress, with a subtle warning 'no network - information may not be up to date'.

Third, when a flight is detected, it would be cool if Cortana would preemtively download all relevant airport maps in reasonable detail, and show 'airport map' as one of the travel icons. That way during your flight you can already check how to run to the nearest Starbucks, or how to get to the rental cars.

Finally, I'm not sure if she already does this, but it would be cool if Cortana could ping me in case of a gate change etc.

 

[txkimmers]

Birthday reminders for contacts
Create and send an email
Add items to a grocery list (well, as long as they make the MS grocery app work as well as the app I currently use anyway)
Pronounce words--I would like to be able to manually input the text "say flerple" and have Cortana pronounce it aloud for me.
Be able to add notes to other OneNote notebooks besides QuickNotes
On location-based reminders: Right now they sometimes they pop up just a bit too soon for me to deal with them at the moment. It would good to have a "snooze" option on them.

Cortana currently gives me drive time and a route to my saved Work place, but I really don't need to directions to a place I go to five+ days a week. What I really need is to be able to save a default route to a faved place, and then get alternate routes if drivetime is high on my default route.

I am also hoping food/drink preferences can get much more sophisticated, like Cortana could save info about restaurants I have visited if I register them. Then if Cortana knows my preference for japanese food, she can mention that a certain japanese restaurant is in the area that I have not visited. I don't want to have to route this data through a third party app either, just save it in the notebook.

ETA: A verbal shortcut when correcting Cortana. So if she confirms, "Reminder to get eggs at the story today at 4pm, is that right?" I can say "No, change reminder to get eggs at the store", rather than having to wait for her to ask me which element of the reminder is incorrect.

 

[Luiz Miranda]

* a place to put real locations for contacts (home and work), not only a textual address, so cortana could support things like: "give me directions to Phillip's home" or "how long to get in Joana's work". now I have to create places that arent connected with the correct contact. on contacts, when tap on +address, just put a location field that open maps application.

* every place in maps applications where we can type a address, have a button "actual location", that fill the address field with the actual location. it?s very common that we are trying to put our actual address in my places, but today is very dificult to do this

 

[mozman68]

I can't remember this being discussed before, but the parsing of searches, particularly when it comes to directions, skips over my address book unless I have actually added an address to my "places" list.

I don't want to have to add every single entry from my address book as a "place" and would prefer asking Cortana, "Directions to John Doe's home," search my address book first and not just bring up web results (which obvioulsy will be wrong for a personal address.

Has anyone else experienced this? Am I doing it wrong?

 

[Joel S79]

Friendly reminder, Cortana's API allows interaction with outside apps. So something like, "Cortana, tell me what the ratings are for [X movie]" or maybe "Reserve a table for 2 at [restaurant] for 7pm on Friday" are things the app developers could program their apps to catch and handle. So make sure you make some noise to App developers to integrate Cortana voice commands into their apps.

I'd like to see Jen Taylor's voice take over for the built in text to speech engine. I imagine it's in progress though, someone retweeted her saying she's got a lot of work to do. ('Tis: Jen Taylor: We've only just begun recording the #Microsoft phone goodness. It should sound more and more like me the more we record. Be patient, friends.)
Keep the witty replies coming, my gf and I use the "tell me a joke" command a lot for cheap laughs.

 

[Jonas_H]

What I'd like to have is an in-built translator. For example if I say "What's money in chinese?" she should be able to tell me the word and show me the writing.
Google Glass can do that!

 

[mozman68]

I think you would need to say, "Translate money to Chinese," or something like that with a key word so Cortana knows what to do....but yeah, that would be kewl.

 

[TheZuneLune]

I hope Cortana wishes you a happy birthday, or better yet sings to you.

 

[Kram Sacul]

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

"C'mon, Chief. You're smarter than that."

 

[bijak_riyandi]

1. better integration with the Map app or even HERE apps -> it's quite some pain to go to Microsoft Maps just to add places to Cortana's notebook... I know she has the option to add, but I need to add specific location on the map...

2. more sports team available in her notebook, particularly A.C. Milan

3. I really hope she uses metric instead of imperial

well, there are a lot of features I want, but mostly have already been said in this thread...

 

[Tim Dearden]

It would be useful if you could ask her directions from not only your current location, but also from someplace besides your current location. For example: "Get me directions from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington."

 

[anon(8555314)]

I would like actions based on combinations of several conditions:
At 9PM, ask me if I want to wake up 30 min early and ride my bike to work tomorrow if the chance of rain is less than X%, the low temperature is greater than X, and the day of week is Mon, Tue, Fri or Sun.

 

[j o e l]

Voice command corrections - mid process.

Usually I would start Cortana and misspeak/mispronounce words or completely forget what to say next. I wish I could say a keyword like "Re-do" or "Start-over" or even "Oops!" and be able to restart the conversation immediately. This way, I wouldn't have to wait for her to finish trying to execute the wrong command before being able to start over again. It would be very useful while driving.