- Nov 19, 2012
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The purpose of this guide is to help you do some initial setup of Cortana in order to help you get the most out of her right from the start. Is this EVERYTHING? No, but it's a jumpstart.
When you open up Cortana for the first time, you will be greeted with a walkthrough for an initial setup. I would HIGHLY suggest you go through these short steps to get her rolling.
Once done, go into the settings (3 horizontal bars on the top right corner) and explore some things:
Interests - This is where you will go to tell Cortana the things you are interested in. The selection is NOT complete and WILL GROW!!
Remind Me - This is where all of your reminders you ask Cortana to set will show up.
Quiet Hours - We'll go into more detail below.
Inner Circle - We'll go into more detail below.
Places - We'll go into more detail below.
Music and Searches - This is where you can use Cortana to identify songs that are playing (Like Shazam and SoundHound)
Settings - This is where you can turn Cortana on or off as well as a few other features. We'll go into that later as well.
Ok, We'll get into things here in the order that makes sense. You can do this however you want, but we'll do it my way (since I am writing it, LOL!).
Inner Circle
This is where you add/remove people that you want to have priority on being able to contact you. For now, this is utilized only in Quiet Hours, but more uses may come of this in the future.
You can add people here from the suggestions below or from your contact list. The only real option at this time is to add/remove.
Now, once you have added someone, you can tap on them and notice that there are 3 Nickname boxes. Here is where you want to put your other names you call people (like Dad, Mom, Brother and so on). You can pretty much put whatever you want (like Slacker for my brother). You can have up to 3 for any contact that you put in your inner circle.
If you want to put a nickname for someone that is NOT in your inner circle, you can by editing their contact info on your device, but you only get to add ONE nickname that way.
Quiet Hours
This is where you will take advantage of the setup you did for Inner Circle.
You can turn Quiet hours on/off at ANY time using the Right Now toggle. No further setup is needed for this.
Automatic Rules allow you to set up a schedule that you want to automatically turn on these rules. You can only have one set of rules at this time (so you can't have a weekday set and a weekend set (this is being looked into)). You can also tell it to set quiet hours based on calendar events (but only one calendar can be selected).
Breakthrough Rules is where your Inner Circle work comes in. You can set the option that if anyone calls 2 times in within 3 minutes, they will break through. You can also turn on/off inner circle breakthrough as well.
You have some additional refinements for the inner circle where you can just allow it to come through, have it prompt the person to break through or just not allow anyone to break through (not sure why this option is there since you can just turn it off, but oh well). You can also have them hear a message that you are busy at this time for anyone that is not in your inner circle.
Places
This is one of my FAVORITE parts of Cortana for customization!! Here, you can add as many places that you want with Nicknames if you choose to use them. This is where the GeoFencing REALLY shines and allows you to help Cortana learn about how you go about life.
I have places listed in here like my most frequently used grocery store, pharmacy, home, work, doctors office, favorite place to kayak and so on.
Putting work into this section will REALLY pay off in the long run. You can use queries like:
Remind me to call my brother when I get home - This will kick off a reminder to call your brother when you get home.
Remind me to stop by Freddy's on my way home to get milk - You don't even have to GO there, as long as you drive by the location, you will get a reminder. Albeit, this won't help you if it is not on your way, but it's something!
Remind me to as my brother about the drill he borrowed next time I am at his house - Pretty self explanatory.
Now, you get the idea.
The settings are pretty self explanatory as well as the rest of Cortana's settings. Please let me know if you have any questions though!
Thanks!
When you open up Cortana for the first time, you will be greeted with a walkthrough for an initial setup. I would HIGHLY suggest you go through these short steps to get her rolling.
Once done, go into the settings (3 horizontal bars on the top right corner) and explore some things:
Interests - This is where you will go to tell Cortana the things you are interested in. The selection is NOT complete and WILL GROW!!
Remind Me - This is where all of your reminders you ask Cortana to set will show up.
Quiet Hours - We'll go into more detail below.
Inner Circle - We'll go into more detail below.
Places - We'll go into more detail below.
Music and Searches - This is where you can use Cortana to identify songs that are playing (Like Shazam and SoundHound)
Settings - This is where you can turn Cortana on or off as well as a few other features. We'll go into that later as well.
Ok, We'll get into things here in the order that makes sense. You can do this however you want, but we'll do it my way (since I am writing it, LOL!).
Inner Circle
This is where you add/remove people that you want to have priority on being able to contact you. For now, this is utilized only in Quiet Hours, but more uses may come of this in the future.
You can add people here from the suggestions below or from your contact list. The only real option at this time is to add/remove.
Now, once you have added someone, you can tap on them and notice that there are 3 Nickname boxes. Here is where you want to put your other names you call people (like Dad, Mom, Brother and so on). You can pretty much put whatever you want (like Slacker for my brother). You can have up to 3 for any contact that you put in your inner circle.
If you want to put a nickname for someone that is NOT in your inner circle, you can by editing their contact info on your device, but you only get to add ONE nickname that way.
Quiet Hours
This is where you will take advantage of the setup you did for Inner Circle.
You can turn Quiet hours on/off at ANY time using the Right Now toggle. No further setup is needed for this.
Automatic Rules allow you to set up a schedule that you want to automatically turn on these rules. You can only have one set of rules at this time (so you can't have a weekday set and a weekend set (this is being looked into)). You can also tell it to set quiet hours based on calendar events (but only one calendar can be selected).
Breakthrough Rules is where your Inner Circle work comes in. You can set the option that if anyone calls 2 times in within 3 minutes, they will break through. You can also turn on/off inner circle breakthrough as well.
You have some additional refinements for the inner circle where you can just allow it to come through, have it prompt the person to break through or just not allow anyone to break through (not sure why this option is there since you can just turn it off, but oh well). You can also have them hear a message that you are busy at this time for anyone that is not in your inner circle.
Places
This is one of my FAVORITE parts of Cortana for customization!! Here, you can add as many places that you want with Nicknames if you choose to use them. This is where the GeoFencing REALLY shines and allows you to help Cortana learn about how you go about life.
I have places listed in here like my most frequently used grocery store, pharmacy, home, work, doctors office, favorite place to kayak and so on.
Putting work into this section will REALLY pay off in the long run. You can use queries like:
Remind me to call my brother when I get home - This will kick off a reminder to call your brother when you get home.
Remind me to stop by Freddy's on my way home to get milk - You don't even have to GO there, as long as you drive by the location, you will get a reminder. Albeit, this won't help you if it is not on your way, but it's something!
Remind me to as my brother about the drill he borrowed next time I am at his house - Pretty self explanatory.
Now, you get the idea.
The settings are pretty self explanatory as well as the rest of Cortana's settings. Please let me know if you have any questions though!
Thanks!
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